What’s Trending in Beauty Packaging: Customization
Alder Packaging is back from Luxe Pack New York, where beauty brands and packaging suppliers come together to shape what’s next in beauty and wellness. This year, one theme stood out across product categories: customized packaging.
Customized packaging often starts with familiar stock components, then reimagines them through strategic design details like shape, color, opacity, texture, decoration, applicators, closures, and accessories. The goal is to create packaging that feels more distinctive, memorable, and connected to the brand.
For beauty and wellness brands, customization is a way to stand out without always starting from scratch. New custom molds can be powerful, but they are not always necessary. There is beauty in simplicity, as long as simplicity does not become bland. Existing molds and stock packaging can be adapted in faster, more cost-effective, and more sustainable ways.
1. Intersection with other industries
Customized packaging can come from borrowing formats across categories. If you are a beauty or wellness brand, you can stand out by taking packaging components from other industries like household cleaning products or food and beverage. Think Vacation Classic Whip SPF 30 that helped the brand go viral and become a household name. This kind of cross-category thinking helps your brand break away from the expected visual codes of beauty and personal care packaging.
2. Customize through shape, color, texture, and decoration
Customization is sensory. Shape, color, texture, opacity, and finish can dramatically change how a package is perceived. A familiar stock component can become bold and unexpected by how it is finished.
Take a look at the fragrance market that continues to grow. As the competition grows more saturated, it’s critical for brands to customize their packaging components to tell their story. While a glass bottle is timeless for perfume, the overcap’s shape, color, and texture are opportunities for brands to make a statement.
3. Make sustainability part of the custom story
Customization can also come from a brand’s commitment to sustainability. For many beauty and wellness brands, standing out means making packaging choices that are more thoughtful and environmentally responsible. This comes to life by reducing unnecessary plastic, prioritizing mono-material components, using refillable or reusable systems, incorporating glass or aluminum, or simplifying packaging for easier recycling.
Sustainable packaging does not have to feel plain or expected. It can be bold, tactile, colorful, and premium. Make sustainability part of the brand experience rather than an afterthought.
What customization looks like:
Hybrid packaging that blurs the line between product categories
Sensorial applicators where unique textures make application feel more intentional
Precision dispensing such as nozzles designed for more targeted dosage
Streamlined packaging with fewer components, reduced plastic, and less waste
Extra-protective formats like airless pumps designed to preserve active ingredients
Refillable and reusable systems that support a longer-term, more sustainable routine
Alder Packaging helps beauty and wellness brands customize packaging through smart component selection, unexpected applications, and sustainable design choices that make products stand out.
Video: Our Team Members Tell All
During the trade show, we asked our team members to share their point of view and favorite product samples from the Alder showcase.