Porecelain

Flawless skin starts with the fine print.

Coconut Butter

Coconut butter is rated Clogging, and this is the page where the internet's most-quoted comedogenic number was actually printed. The 4 that trails coconut oil everywhere was scored against the row Fulton labelled "coconut butter" — his 1989 rabbit-ear table has no coconut oil row at all — and he never said what that historical material was. That 4 is a real result, and it is still a rabbit's ear from 1989 measuring a material Fulton never troubled to identify.

Clogging Low confidence Legacy score 4 on a 0-5 scale · Fulton 1989 · low reliability

Hydrogenated coconut fat, lauric-rich. This is the material the rabbit assay actually scored.

What it is

A coconut-derived fat, solid at room temperature and melting on contact with skin, used the way any butter is used in a formula: to give a balm or a body butter structure in the jar and slip on the skin, and to lay down an occlusive film. That is the plain part. The hard part is that "coconut butter" is a common name, not a single defined material, and the whole of this page turns on that. Cosmetic nomenclature recognises Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Seed Butter — the fat obtained from the coconut seed — as one ingredient identity, and Hydrogenated Coconut Oil as a separate one. Neither maps cleanly onto the coconut oil you buy in a jar, though the historical and common usage of these names overlaps and does not track modern INCI distinctions. And what a supplier actually ships as "coconut butter" can be a third thing again: Hallstar's Biochemica Coconut Butter, for one, carries the INCI declaration "Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil" — coconut oil hardened to a butter with a hydrogenated vegetable oil, melting point 38–48 °C. So the common name "coconut butter" can refer to at least three distinct materials. What they have in common is that coconut-derived fat is generally lauric-rich — heavily fractionated or blended grades aside — which is the fatty-acid band Fulton's own generalisation implicated as his most active. We flag that as chemistry, not as a measurement of this material — the distinction matters below.

Why we rate it Clogging

We rate it Clogging at Low confidence, and the confidence is low for a reason worth stating up front: everything under the rating is one rabbit-ear assay, from 1989, on a material of unstated identity. This is the page that other pages point at. The comedogenic 4 that follows coconut oil across the internet is not the oil's own number. Fulton's 1989 rabbit-ear survey in the Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists — the source of most comedogenic numbers still in circulation — has no coconut oil row anywhere in it, in any table. What it has is a row, in Section VI, "Oils," that reads "Coconut butter — 4," three lines below "Cocoa butter — 4." For more than thirty years the lists have passed that number to coconut oil, which has no row of its own. What Fulton printed it against was "coconut butter" — and, as below, he never recorded what that material was. What the 4 is, exactly. It is a 4 on Fulton's 0–5 scale, and by his own published key that is not a borderline result: "a minimal grade of 0 to 1 is not considered significant," 2–3 is borderline, and "a grade of 4 to 5 is uniformally reproduceable and considered positive." So the rabbit ear read coconut butter as a positive comedogen, not a maybe. The method behind it was the standard one: the material at roughly 10% in propylene glycol, applied to the inner ear of New Zealand albino rabbits, five days a week for two weeks, three rabbits per assay, follicles then scored for keratosis under a micrometer. Fulton's only sentence about coconut in the whole paper is the clinical impression the score was meant to confirm: "Clinically, natural oils such as cocoa butter and coconut butter have long been known to cause problems with pomade acne. This is confirmed in the rabbit ear assay." The 4 is not unqualified, and this is the qualifier the lists drop. The row sits under Fulton's section heading "VI. Oils*", and he defines that asterisk once, as "Results depend on source of raw material." The asterisk is on the heading, so every oil and butter in the section inherits it — coconut butter included. A 4 that Fulton himself says depends on which batch you had is not a fixed property of the ingredient. And it is a 4 for a material he never identifies. Fulton gives no supplier, no trade name, no INCI name, no composition and no hydrogenation status for his "coconut butter." Given that the name covers at least three distinct materials today, the honest statement is narrow: a fat Fulton labelled "coconut butter" scored 4 in his rabbit assay, and which of the materials now sold under that name it corresponds to cannot be recovered from the paper. An ambiguous tested material is not an untested one — the 4 is real — but it is also not a clean reading of any single ingredient you can buy. No second laboratory corroborates it. Morris and Kwan's 1983 survey, on the same 0–5 scale and six years earlier — the one independent legacy assay that openly contradicts Fulton in print, on sodium lauryl sulfate — has no coconut butter row at all. So within the legacy corpus we hold, Fulton 1989 is the only assay that scored this material. Banish, which is where many readers will have met the number, republishes Fulton's figure; it is not a separate measurement agreeing with him.

What the evidence doesn’t tell you

One rabbit-ear assay is the entire evidence base, and the rabbit ear is exactly the model this site spends most of its time being careful about. Three rabbits, an inner ear, roughly 10% in propylene glycol, five days a week for two weeks: not a human face, not a finished formula, and not a realistic use concentration. Draelos and DiNardo's 2006 re-evaluation in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology tested finished products on small human panels and found the isolated rabbit-ear scores a poor guide to what a product does on human skin — it was not a human re-test of coconut butter, and should not be read as one. A 2025 review in JAAD Reviews, surveying the field from 1972 onward, found that no standardised comedogenicity test exists at all and that "non-comedogenic" is an unregulated label. Those objections apply to a 4 as much as to a 0. We identified no human comedogenicity study of coconut butter. There is a human study of coconut oil — Ungaksornpairote and colleagues, 2015, thirty women, whole face, one month — and it is real and it is cited in full on the coconut oil page. It is not evidence about this material, and we are not going to borrow it: coconut oil and coconut butter are different entries here for the same reason the 4 caused trouble in the first place. The identity gap is not a technicality. Because Fulton never says which coconut material he tested, the 4 cannot be pinned with confidence to Cocos Nucifera Seed Butter, or to Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, or to a coconut-oil-plus-hydrogenated-vegetable-oil blend — the three things the label word can mean. His section asterisk goes further and says, in effect, that the source of the raw material changes the result. So the rating covers a name, applied to a fat we can characterise chemically as lauric-rich, and rests on a single 1989 reading of a batch nobody can now identify. That is a weaker footing than "comedogenic rating: 4" makes it sound, and it is why the confidence here is Low. We are also not going to convert the lauric-acid chemistry into a mechanism the evidence has not established. It is true that coconut-derived fat is lauric-rich and that Fulton's own generalisation named the mid-chain fatty acids as his most active comedogens. It does not follow that we have measured why this material scored 4, and a generalisation about a chain length is not a measurement of this fat. The rating rests on the 4, with the 4's own limits attached — not on a chemical story built on top of it.

Where you’ll see it

Body butters, balms, lip products, solid moisturiser bars, cleansing balms, and a good deal of hand-made and "natural" skincare — the places any solid, occlusive fat is used for texture. On a label it appears as Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Seed Butter or Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Butter, and, when a supplier has hardened coconut oil to a butter, sometimes as "Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil." Those are illustrative categories, not a measured prevalence; we have not audited the market, and position on an ingredient list is not a dose. Keep three neighbours separate in your head, because collapsing them is the original error. Coconut Oil is a different entry, rated on a human study, and the famous 4 pinned to it was printed against "coconut butter," not coconut oil. Cocoa Butter carries the same Fulton 4 from the same asterisked section, and unlike coconut butter it has direct human evidence, which is why it is rated and reasoned differently. And fractionated coconut oil is a different ingredient again, with its own INCI name, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride. The word "coconut" on a label covers materials the legacy literature treats very differently, and only the one on this page was ever actually in the rabbit's ear.

Sources

Each source says what it actually is. Several widely-cited “sources” for comedogenic ratings are republishing the same 1989 assay, and counting them as independent agreement is how a thin evidence base gets made to look thick.

  1. Fulton JE. "Comedogenicity and irritancy of commonly used ingredients in skin care products." J Soc Cosmet Chem 40:321–333 (1989) The primary source, and the origin of the number every consumer list republishes — read off a 400dpi render of the journal table rather than off a list quoting it. Table I, Section VI ("Oils*"), scores "Coconut butter" 4 for comedogenicity on a 0–5 scale, three rows below cocoa butter's 4. Fulton's key: 0–1 "not considered significant," 2–3 borderline, 4–5 "considered positive." Method: roughly 10% in propylene glycol, inner ear of New Zealand albino rabbits, three rabbits per assay, five days a week for two weeks, follicular keratosis scored under a micrometer. TWO qualifiers the lists strip: the section asterisk, defined once as "Results depend on source of raw material," governs every row under it; and Fulton names no supplier, trade name, INCI name, composition or hydrogenation status for his coconut butter. His only coconut sentence is the pomade-acne clinical note quoted on this page. Cited as the sole measurement behind the rating, with its identity gap stated.
  2. Morris WE, Kwan SC. "Use of the rabbit ear model in evaluating the comedogenic potential of cosmetic ingredients." J Soc Cosmet Chem 34:215–225 (1983) An independent primary assay on the same 0–5 scale, six years before Fulton 1989 — not a republisher of him, and on record contradicting him (its authors write that their finding, and Kligman and Mills's, of the noncomedogenic activity of sodium lauryl sulfate "conflicts with the high scores published by Fulton"). Cited here for what it does NOT contain: reading its full row list, there is no coconut butter row, and no coconut row of any kind. So the one contemporaneous survey that could have corroborated Fulton's 4 did not test the material. It establishes the absence of independent corroboration, not a competing number.
  3. Hallstar — Biochemica® Coconut Butter, technical product page Manufacturer documentation, cited for one factual point: what a supplier actually ships as "coconut butter." Its stated INCI is "Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil" — i.e. coconut oil hardened to a butter with a hydrogenated vegetable oil, a white solid fat melting at 38–48 °C — which is a different identity from Cocos Nucifera Seed Butter and from Hydrogenated Coconut Oil. Not a comedogenicity study; evidence that the label term names more than one material.
  4. Cosmetic Ingredient Review — Cocos nucifera (Coconut) Seed Butter, ingredient record The industry safety index entry establishing that Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Seed Butter is a recognised, separately assessed cosmetic ingredient identity — the fat obtained from the coconut seed, reviewed by the CIR Expert Panel among plant-derived fatty-acid oils and found safe in present practices of use. A safety assessment, not a comedogenicity study, and cited only for the nomenclature point that "Seed Butter" is a defined identity distinct from Hydrogenated Coconut Oil.
  5. Cosmetic Ingredient Review — Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, ingredient record Cited for the same nomenclature point as its Seed Butter counterpart: cosmetic nomenclature treats Hydrogenated Coconut Oil as a separate ingredient identity, so equating "coconut butter" with hydrogenated coconut fat is not a safe move — the exact equivalence the ratings file walked back (D63) and the cocoa butter page also flags. A safety/nomenclature record, not comedogenicity evidence.
  6. "Comedogenicity in cosmeceuticals: a review of clinical relevance, regulatory gaps, and future directions." JAAD Reviews (2025) A recent peer-reviewed review of the whole field, covering literature from 1972 to 2025. Finds that rabbit-to-human translation is inconsistent, that no standardised comedogenicity test exists, and that "non-comedogenic" is an unregulated label. Independent of Fulton in authorship; it is a literature review, not an independent replication. Cited for the field-wide caveat that sits under a legacy 4.
  7. Banish — "The Ultimate Guide to Acne-Causing Ingredients" A consumer ingredient list, cited only to locate where a reader will have met this number. It republishes the Fulton 1989 rabbit-ear figure; it is not an independent measurement, and matching numbers across such lists are not proof of separate testing. Listed as a republisher of the primary source above, not as corroboration of it.

Others in the same family

Butters behave similarly enough that the evidence for one is often wrongly read across to the others. These are its structural relatives, not a guess. What the evidence says about butters as a family ›

Last reviewed 2026-07-12 · How we decide

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