Key Takeaways:
Pinterest is putting specificity at the center of its first-ever Beauty Trend Report, as consumers move away from broad aesthetics toward increasingly precise interpretations of hair, makeup, nail, fragrance, and skincare trends.
According to the report, 85% of weekly Pinterest users say they have discovered new beauty trends or ideas on the platform before seeing them elsewhere, while 64% say Pinterest is better for discovering beauty trends that feel up to date. As the beauty trend cycle fragments as a result of the speed of social media feeds, Pinterest is being used for increasingly personalized searches. Pinterest is seen as a research tool instead of a social media page.
The report arrives as Pinterest builds out the commerce infrastructure around beauty discovery. The platform has partnered with Sephora on its “Makeup Maximalism” trend, connecting inspirational content with prestige beauty products. Pinterest is also launching Beauty Guides, a feature designed to turn hair and nail inspiration into actionable looks. Users can open a hair or nail Pin and select “Get the Guide” to see a breakdown of the look, including what to ask the salon, similar inspirations, and shoppable products. The guide can then be saved for a future appointment or used to recreate the look at home. Beauty Guides are currently available to iOS users in the US, with broader availability planned.
For example, consumers are no longer searching for a bob, red manicure, or red hair, but for textured French bobs, dark-red cat-eye nails, and shades that sit between copper, cherry cola, and espresso. Pinterest’s search data points to a beauty consumer who is simultaneously more experimental and more specific. Maximalist makeup and reflective nail art are rising alongside soft natural makeup; gourmand fragrance is becoming more nuanced; and familiar hair trends are being reworked through texture, color, and personalization.
After several years in which pared-back aesthetics such as “clean girl” beauty dominated social feeds, Pinterest’s data suggests consumers are becoming more comfortable with experimentation. Its “Makeup Maximalism” trend encompasses dramatic lashes, graphic eyeliner, unconventional color combinations, gems, rhinestones, and full-face looks.
Rather than maximalism being confined to editorials or occasion makeup, the searches suggest individual high-impact elements are increasingly being incorporated into everyday routines.
The search pattern indicates a move away from uniformity: Dramatic lashes can coexist with a relatively bare face, while graphic liner or an exaggerated lip can become a focal point of an otherwise restrained look. Pinterest’s Sephora partnership is built around flexibility, positioning maximalism as something consumers can enter with just one statement element or a complete look.
Maximalism is also taking a distinctly metallic direction. Pinterest’s “Arctic Frost” trend combines frosted finishes, silver, crystals, cool blue tones, and metallic lips, drawing heavily on Y2K beauty codes but translating them through newer textures and finishes.
The numbers point to another iteration of beauty’s ongoing 2000s revival, but one increasingly defined by finish rather than straightforward reproduction. Frost, chrome, multichrome, and light-reflecting texture allow consumers to reference an era without recreating it wholesale.
Blush remains one of makeup’s most adaptable categories, but Pinterest data indicates consumers are moving beyond a single viral shade or placement technique. Interest has spiked in a broader range of blush shades, including dusty rose, terracotta, peach, berry, and cherry red alongside blurred lips and soft skin finishes.
Blushes' continued momentum is being driven by variation rather than novelty. Different shades, textures, and placements allow brands to continue expanding the category without requiring consumers to abandon the behavior they have already adopted.
Maximalism is not replacing the clean girl altogether. Pinterest’s “Romantic Reverie” trend shows another consumer moving in the opposite direction, favoring freckles, natural lips, soft matte complexions, loose curls, and minimally made-up eyes.
The simultaneous growth of maximalist and natural aesthetics underlines one of the report’s clearest themes: Beauty is becoming less organized around a single dominant look. Consumers can move between aesthetic identities rather than subscribe to one overarching beauty uniform.
Hair color is also moving toward customization. Under its “Pink-a-Boo” trend, Pinterest identifies a shift away from all-over pink dye toward stripes, peekaboo sectioning, braids, money pieces, and unexpected color combinations.
Rather than committing to a single viral hair color, consumers are finding ways to control where and how color appears. The popularity of peekaboo color, streaks, and money pieces also lowers the commitment threshold, potentially widening the commercial opportunity beyond permanent all-over color.
The bob remains trendy, too, but Pinterest’s search data suggests the haircut is fragmenting into increasingly specific silhouettes rather than converging around one definitive shape.
Layering, texture, bangs, and flipped ends are softening the precision traditionally associated with the bob. Commercially, that personalization matters: Consumers can join the broader bob trend while choosing a variation suited to their hair texture, length, and styling habits.
The same language is reshaping hair color. Pinterest’s “Copper Waves” trend encompasses mocha, espresso, cherry cola, plum, auburn, and oxidized copper, with balayage and tonal dimension allowing consumers to combine several shades within one look.
The terminology illustrated Pinterest’s wider specificity thesis particularly well. Traditional color categories such as blonde, brunette, and red are being supplemented with increasingly distinct language to communicate undertone, depth, finish, and mood. For hair color brands and salons, that creates both opportunity and complexity: Consumers arrive with a much more detailed visual vocabulary to describe the result they expect.
Pinterest’s “Skinvested” trend captures another ongoing category shift: Skincare behaviors are migrating beyond the face. Consumers are building more elaborate routines for the body and scalp, incorporating active ingredients, exfoliation, barrier care, and treatment products previously associated primarily with facial skincare.
The crossover between facial skincare, bodycare, and haircare continues to blur traditional category boundaries. Retinol and glycolic acid are no longer solely facial skincare ingredients, while “ detox” and other scalp treatments borrow the language and ritualization of skincare. For brands, the opportunity is increasingly in extending established ingredient stories and treatment behaviors to new parts of the body.
What Pinterest dubs as “Farm to Face” captures the growing interest in ingredients and DIY treatments positioned around the connection between diet, hair, skin, and wellness.
The trend sits at the intersection of beauty and wellness, as consumers connect topical routines with diet and at-home treatments. It also demonstrated the continued appeal of recognizable ingredients at a time when beauty formulation is becoming increasingly technical: Pantry staples provide an accessible counterpoint to peptides, growth factors, and biotech ingredients.
Pinterest’s fragrance data suggests the gourmand boom still has further room to grow, although the vocabulary around it is becoming more nuanced. Search terms place emphasis on milky, marshmallow, chocolate, coffee, and vanilla scents alongside the broader growth of skin scents and fragrance wardrobes.
Consumers seem to be interested in scents that combine edible associations with softness and intimacy. At the same time, rising interest in fragrance wardrobes supports the broader shift toward scent as a collectible and occasion-specific category.
Food is inspiring more than just perfume, but the nail space, too. Under “Latte Lacquer,” Pinterest sees nail inspiration moving through coffee, caramel, berries, citrus, chocolate, and milky finishes.
Foodification is doing more than just providing playful shade names. Coffee, fruit, and dessert terminology gives consumers an unusually precise shorthand for color, opacity, texture, and finish—turning “brown,” for example, into latte, mocha, caramel, or espresso.
Pinterest’s biggest percentage increases are concentrated in nail art, where familiar chrome and cat eye effects are being combined into increasingly elaborate designs. Its “Chrome Sweet Chrome” trend takes reflective finishes and layers them with dots, stripes, jelly textures, gothic palettes, and contrasting colors.
Consumers are stacking color, shape, finish, technique, and aesthetic into a single query. Rather than one viral manicure dominating, the combination is becoming the trend.
Taken together, Pinterest’s report points less toward a handful of dominant beauty looks than a change in how trends operate.
The same consumer landscape can accommodate maximalist makeup and no-mascara beauty, pink streaks and lived-in brunette, skin scents, and dessert gourmands, all at once. What connects them is customization. Consumers are taking recognizable beauty codes and adding another qualifier: chrome becomes jelly pink, copper becomes oxidized, blush becomes terracotta.
A faster trend cycle does not necessarily require developing a new product for every microtrend. Many of Pinterest’s fastest-growing searches represent new combinations or descriptions of existing colors, textures, formats, and techniques. The commercial opportunity may therefore lie as much in merchandising, naming, creator content, search optimization, and education as it does in product development.
Pinterest’s Beauty Guides make that evolution particularly relevant to the platform itself. An inspiration becomes more specific; the distance between seeing a highly particular look and figuring out how to recreate it becomes a commercial problem to solve. Pinterest is increasingly positioning itself not only as the place where a consumer finds “jelly pink chrome nails,” but as the platform that can take them from search to the salon chair to the shopping basket.