Welcome to another edition of Know Your Skin Care 😀
I was suppose to blog about this moons ago and as usual, I’ve forgotten about it 🙁 . Previously I talk about the colored square box that was found on the top edge crimp behind most skin care or product tubes. If you’ve missed it you can click on the link here to read more on it.
On a typical skin care bottle you will find a few symbol at the back of the bottle, usually at the most bottom of the bottle or jar. One distinctive symbol that most people mislook is the interesting looking jar with a lid half opened. This little jar is called Period After Opening (PAO) symbol.
Before I go deep into PAO, let’s get to know more about the meaning of it shall we 🙂
Period After Opening or PAO is a new requirement for cosmetic manufacturer with a minimum durability of at least 30 months whereas the date of durability “best used before” or “expiry date” is no longer a must. At such, an indication of the period of time after opening on the product is mandatory to indicate to consumer that these product can be used without any harm. In layman term, PAO is a symbol that identifies the useful lifetime of a skin care or cosmetic product after its package has been opened for the first time. The symbol is in a form of an open-jar with a written number of months or years on the jar itself, but it’s usually indicated in number of months followed by a “M” at the end. For example 6M simply means the product can be used for 6 months after opening.
Determining Product Expiry For You
Most of the beauty products now comes with either manufacturing date or if you’re lucky, expiry date. There is two way on how you can determine product expiry. Both way works but I’ll tell you which I follow at the end. I’m not going into the common shelf life question as I believe you already know the different by now.
Expiry Date Reached
Like I said earlier some product do comes with expiry date stated. If let’s say the newly opened product expiry is stated Dec-13, by all mean you should stop using this product when the date reached. What if you only opened the product on Jun-13 and the PAO stated is 18 months? It means you still need to stop using BY Dec-13. The easiest to remember is “whichever comes first”.
Expiry Date Not Reached, But PAO Did
Same scenario but different situation. Let’s say you bought a product on Jan-12 and you find the expiry date is stated by Dec-13 with PAO 6M. Usually eye cream comes with 6M PAO so don’t be shock 🙂 . You opened the new product on Feb-12, which means your PAO expiry will be achieved on Aug-12. It is recommended to stop using after Aug-12 although the expiry date is still another few more months to go.
To be really honest, I never really give all this Period After Opening a thought because my skin care usually last for three months with daily day and night usage. I don’t like to waste skin care by using them for a month or less and push them aside. Usually I’ll finish it before moving on to a new one. Even if I don’t use it all due to unforeseen reasons like smelly skin care, I still don’t follow PAO lol. But I’m so guilty when it comes to cosmetic, which most of the short PAO product *cough* *mascara* *cough* should been in the rubbish bin already. I’ll talk about that in another edition of Know Your Skin Care 😀
What about you? Do you follow expiry date stated on the bottle, or do you calculate yourself based on manufactured date or even obligating to Period Of Opening which is also known as PAO in short? Either way, it is good to know what the small symbols on your beauty product means. It’s interesting that most of my friends told me they didn’t even notice the open-jar symbol all these while!
Comments (26)
Wow I love this post! You are like my beauty lecturer lol. I will check more of the PAO thingy now. Usually I follow the expiry date or check the manufactured date is it the latest or not.
Lol. I like all the “technical” stuff on beauty products. So interesting :D. I too usually follow the expiry date if any. Because if PAO reached but expiry is not, the product can still be used 🙂
Thanks for this piece of information, Fiona. I may have seen that jar symbol on my skincare but never really understood what is actually was. I usually look at the date of expiry on my products and will never use expired skincare items.
I do hope this helps 😀
I knew what those jar symbol is but never really pay attention to it. The best is to have expiry date on it still IMHO.
Good to know the symbol meaning too. I have read about the open-jar somewhere. I don’t follow the PAO so to speak. It’s too soon if you know what I mean.
Totally get what you mean. Expiry date is somehow better.
Oh wow! I never knew that. Thanks for this very useful information!
You’re welcome Jojo. Glad it’s informative for you 😉
this post brings so much fun! now i go around looking at the back of my stuffs for that sign… however, i noticed that most of the japanese brands dont have it leh… but all the western brands do
You are right. Most don’t have. They have words that we can never understand LOL. Just note down when you open the product and calculate from there 🙂
liking this post 😀 i sometimes did not follow the PAO too lol, like quite a waste for me because some time the content inside still left quite a lot ><
but I do notice most of the mascara PAO is 6 months and really after 6 months, the mascara become a bit dry and kind of hard to use ad -.-
Exacty. So waste if follow PAO for example eye cream. How to finish in 6 months since we only need a dot size eh? Usually mascara should be replaced every 3 months but PAO is from 3-6 months. After 6 months my mascara is still in good condition. Not dry like yours. Hmmm.
yup!! eye cream really can use very long time>__< is it? i am a little bit surprise of the shelf life of your mascara. no idea why i use until like that xD
Those are not shelf life. It’s the life span of an opened mascara. It applies across to every mascara.
Thank you so much for the info!! Learn so much from you. I noticed it but I don’t know what it means. I usually do not really care about the PAO and I do agree withh you it is such a waste. However for expiry, I will try not to use it if already expired.
My pleasure! Not try dear, just stop using completely if reaches the expiry date stated if any 🙂
Thanks dear Fiona for this post. I learnt about this jar symbol and its meaning not too long ago because that was when I embarked on proper skincare routine. Because of the jar symbol, I am reluctant to try too many products at one go, fearing that I won’t be able to finish using up the multiple products before the PAO is over. Haha, I am guilty of the mascara crime of using it forever and ever until it dries up or smell funky. But so far I have not pushed my luck that far yet because I only started applying makeup recently.
I agree with you on not trying many product at one go. I still feel and practice the same – open a new product only after finish the current product. I just hate to waste.
Mascara’s PAO is too short. No one can ever finish one tube. My RMK is still going strong LOL. If it’s expensive mascara there’s no way I can throw it away after just 3 months.
Haha, I think we have a common trait – discipline when it comes to using a new product. Good to follow through and see the effect after using it over a period. Yeah, it is terrible to waste the products and money. Expensive mascara should last longer because there’s just so much mascara to apply at any one time.
I only keep 3-4 mascara at the moment. All which I rotate on day to day basis 🙂
Thank you for the info.
Glad you find it useful 😉
I like to finish using my skincare before opening new ones too. So, this is not something I need to worry much. Instead, I’m more interested to know the manufacturing date of the product so that I know which product from my stash to use first. Some company do have easy to read manufacturing month and year on the product such as Clinique, Clarins and SK-II … Some would have a sticker on the box. However, some don’t. And when I ask, it’s either the staff is reluctant to share the info with customer or they themselves do not bother to know. Sad.
I am hoping that you share your knowledge on this with us in the future if it interests you as I really like to learn more.
Thank you for this PAO topic, it is very informative and especially good for young users(readers).
Interestingly, I’m curious about manufacturing date when I first started with proper skin care routine. I notice some product doesn’t come with either manufacturing date or expiring date. All was provided is just a batch code. I’ve since then know how to read Clarins code and all brands under Suria Meriang aka Estee Lauder Group of Companies well. But some brand which I seldom buy or miniature that I bought online only comes with batch code. Therefore I found a way to identify these codes and I’ve even blogged about it back in 2011, 6-months after I started a proper skin care routine. Here’s the link http://www.street-love.net/2011/09/check-your-cosmetic-skin-care-expiry.html. Hope it’s useful to you too.
More technical post soon 🙂
May I know if the item not opening before but expired. I have seen the symbol of 12m so the item still can be used? actually it’s a body mask and bought from beauty fair but expiration date on last month.
Hi Stella,
I’ve covered this at the “Expiry Date Reached” section. Here’s the snippet:
Like I said earlier some product do comes with expiry date stated. If let’s say the newly opened product expiry is stated Dec-13, by all mean you should stop using this product when the date reached. What if you only opened the product on Jun-13 and the PAO stated is 18 months? It means you still need to stop using BY Dec-13. The easiest to remember is “whichever comes first”.
So to answer your question, the product you mentioned has expired therefore you should not use it at all.
Hope this helps 🙂