About Tested Glow

Tested Glow is an independent beauty desk based in Los Angeles, California. We publish reviews, routines and buying guides covering skin care, makeup, hair and nails — written for people who want to know what is in the bottle rather than what is on the marketing plan.

Why we exist

Most beauty content is optimised for one of two things: affiliate revenue or brand relationships. Both incentives push in the same direction — toward recommending more products, more often, with less scrutiny.

We started this desk because there is a gap between those incentives and what readers actually need, which is usually a smaller number of better-chosen products and an honest account of what each one can and cannot do.

How we work

We distinguish evidence from inference

When we describe a product's formulation, we are reading an ingredient list. When we describe how something performs, we say whether that comes from published testing, from general formulation characteristics, or from our own use. We do not present one as the other.

We do not publish star ratings, because a five-point score implies a measurement methodology we do not have. Where a numeric claim appears, it comes from a manufacturer's published data or a cited study, and we label it.

We do not fabricate testing

We have not run clinical trials, and we do not claim to. Phrases like "in our testing" appear on this site only where we genuinely tested something, which — for most formulation claims — we have not. Where we rely on published information, we say so.

We update rather than rewrite

Beauty formulations change, prices move, and packaging gets redesigned. When we materially update an article, we add an updated date. We do not quietly replace the substance of a piece and leave the original date in place.

How we make money

We participate in affiliate programs, including Amazon Associates. When a reader clicks a retail link on our site and buys something, we may earn a commission. This costs the reader nothing and does not change the price.

Two commitments follow from that. First, we do not accept payment for placement or for a positive verdict. Second, commission rates do not influence which products appear in a guide — if anything, the categories we cover most often are the ones with the thinnest commission structures, because that is where the honest information gap is widest.

Read the full affiliate disclosure

What we will not do

• Publish a review of a product we have not looked at closely enough to describe its formulation
• Present marketing copy as our own verdict
• Invent testing, measurements, ratings or clinical outcomes
• Recommend a product because of its commission rate
• Use urgency tactics, countdown timers or fabricated scarcity

The desk

Where we are

We are based in Los Angeles, California. Several articles on this site are written specifically for the conditions here — low humidity, hard water, high year-round UV — because those conditions change which products actually work, and most national beauty coverage ignores them.

If you want to get in touch, contact the desk.