Is Sulfated Castor Oil Comedogenic?
Sulfated Castor Oil is rated 3/5 in published comedogenicity lists — rated moderate.
Also appears on labels as
- turkey red oil
What the rating describes
Modified castor oil, rated moderate (plain castor oil rates 1).
A comedogenicity rating is a 0–5 score assigned in published ingredient testing. A 3/5 places Sulfated Castor Oil in the higher part of those tables. The score describes the raw ingredient as tested — not a finished formula, where concentration, the rest of the ingredient list, and how the product is used all differ.
Position on a label matters too: ingredients listed near the front are usually present in larger amounts than those near the end.
Non-comedogenic swaps
Affiliate links — we may earn a commission. Picks are products labeled non-comedogenic; we don’t test or endorse.
CeraVe PM Facial Moisturizing Lotion
Oil-free niacinamide moisturizer, labeled non-comedogenic.
Shop at UltaPaula's Choice CLEAR Oil-Free Moisturizer
Made for breakout-prone skin; low-rated ingredient list.
Shop at Paula's ChoiceEltaMD UV Clear SPF 46
The classic labeled-non-comedogenic facial sunscreen.
Shop at Dermstore
Where the rating comes from
Ratings on this site come from published comedogenicity literature in the Fulton 1989 lineage — the 0–5 tables compiled from ingredient testing and reproduced across dermatology reference lists since. Where sources disagree, we keep the higher-caution value and say so. We never publish an invented number: ingredients without published data appear as “not in our database yet”.
Our flag threshold follows the American Academy of Dermatology's Invitational Symposium on Comedogenicity (J Am Acad Dermatol 1989): substances scoring 0–2 in the rabbit-ear assay are unlikely to clog pores in humans, while scores above 2 warrant more caution — which is why this site flags 3/5 and up.
Related ingredients
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