Designs for Beauty

Designs for Beauty is a seven product beauty range from the American supplement maker Designs for Health, built around skin, hair and nails. Rather than one crowded multivitamin it splits the job up: a collagen powder, a keratin capsule, a concentrated fish oil, a liposomal vitamin C liquid, annatto tocotrienols, a spore-based probiotic and one peptide lotion for the outside.

One is collagen led and the other is keratin led. Beyond Brilliance is a 180g unflavoured powder built on 5g of hydrolysed collagen peptides per scoop, with 10,000mcg of biotin and 10mg of silicon. The Big Glow is a two capsule serve built on soluble keratin (Cynatine HNS), the protein hair and nails are actually made of, with bamboo silica, citrus and fruit extracts, vitamin C and biotin. The brand designs them to be used together rather than instead of each other.

Beyond Brilliance is the daily collagen scoop. The Big Glow is the hair, skin and nails capsule. Calm the Storm is a concentrated fish oil at 800mg EPA and 800mg DHA per serve. Hit the Lights is a liposomal vitamin C liquid at 1,000mg per teaspoon. The Capital E is annatto tocotrienols with no tocopherols. Perfect Equilibrium is a five strain spore probiotic. Dipped in Gold is the only topical, a peptide face lotion.

Mix one 6g scoop into about 240ml of water or any cold drink, once a day. It is unflavoured and unsweetened with nothing else in the tub, so it disappears into coffee, juice or a smoothie without changing the taste, and it dissolves cold. The 180g tub holds 30 servings, so a month at one scoop a day.

Not many. Beyond Brilliance contains collagen peptides, which are animal derived. Calm the Storm is fish oil in a bovine gelatin softgel, and The Capital E also uses bovine gelatin. The Big Glow has a vegetarian capsule, but its soluble keratin comes from sheep wool. Perfect Equilibrium uses a hypromellose capsule and Hit the Lights is a liquid, so those two are the vegetarian-friendly options.

A few things. Biotin at supplement levels can interfere with laboratory tests that use biotin technology, including some heart and hormone blood tests, so mention Beyond Brilliance or The Big Glow before any blood test. Calm the Storm contains fish and The Capital E is vitamin E, and both are worth raising if you take blood thinning medication or have surgery booked. Hit the Lights contains ethanol and 130mg of sodium per serve.

Not according to its own ingredient list. The brand describes the lotion as silicone-free, but the INCI list includes cyclopentasiloxane and polysilicone-11, so we have left that claim off our listing. It is still the range's peptide lotion, built around PeptiYouth with DeltaGold tocotrienols, stable vitamin C, coenzyme Q10 and carnosine, and the brand has had it through a 100 subject patch test.