Clay face masks are not disappearing. According to the Spate Popularity Index (which blends Google search, TikTok views, and Instagram posts) retrieved by BeautyMatter, clay face masks are the single largest trend in the dataset. “[They sit at] 5.4 million in popularity and steady +26% YoY growth, outranking bubble masks, sheet masks, and every other format on the list,” Mathilde Riba, Beauty Insights Manager at Spate, told BeautyMatter. Category revenue backs this up. Madi Snell, Head of Beauty at ecommerce accelerator Pattern, told BeautyMatter that traditional masks—sheet, mud, and cream combined—generated $387 million over the last twelve months, up 26% YoY, at an average selling price of $21.
So why does everyone in the industry talk about clay like it’s on its way out? The answer isn’t sales. It’s storytelling. Clay is growing in dollars and search volume, but it has lost the cultural argument to formats built for a screen (LED devices, bubble masks, hydrogels) that photograph, film, and dramatize better than a beige paste ever will. As Sophie Wayman, Category Director of Skin, Hair and Own Brand at SpaceNK, puts it to BeautyMatter, “While clay masks remain relevant, they have taken a backseat to more results-driven formats.” Borghese CEO and COO Dawn Hilarczyk agreed, but from a customer’s perspective. “Consumers have more mask formats than ever, but we do not believe consumers have moved away from mud masks. What has changed is the expectation around efficacy, convenience, and experience,” she said to BeautyMatter. Perception, not performance, is the story here.
For the current era of social media, clay’s problem was never efficacy; it was theater (or lack thereof). There’s no unboxing moment, no reveal, and no visible transformation that survives fifteen seconds of vertical video. Dr. Ifeoma Ejikeme, founder of Zkin, framed the category split plainly. “You can think of a clay mask more like your serum, whereas your LED mask is a treatment at home.”.
Retail is already repricing around that distinction. LED and red-light devices are growing faster and earning dramatically more per unit. Snell noted LED/red-light masks did $327 million in the last twelve months, up 32% YoY, at a $118 average selling price, about 6x higher than traditional masks, adding that “LED is smaller in dollars but growing faster and earning far more per unit.” Search behavior mirrors the shift. “Red light”/”LED mask” search terms grew 53% YoY, more than double the 20% growth on general “face mask” terms, per Snell’s data, even as raw face-mask search volume still leads.
Wayman sees the same recalibration on the shop floor. Grab-and-go sheet masks have tripled their SKU count YoY at SpaceNK, and when a customer asks for “a mask” today, she said they’re typically seeking a specific outcome. “They’re chasing glow, hydration, and repair, rather than simply asking for a traditional clay mask.” Clay didn’t get worse. It got out-narrated by formats engineered for visible, filmable results.
LED is the clearest winner in attention, but it isn’t the only one. Every one of Pattern’s top-five fastest-growing mask products (with a minimum $100,000 in sales) is an LED or red-light device. Revomadic’s Face Genie massager, up 1,209% YoY, Kaoudt’s red light mat, up 983%, and three more in the same category. No clay, mud, or sheet product cracked that list, Snell noted.
Crucially, this isn’t a K-beauty repeat. Snell observed that K-beauty owns traditional masks outright. Medicube and Biodance alone account for roughly 31% of category revenue. However, LED’s top-five brands (Inia, iRestore, CurrentBody, Hime Sama, and GYH) are largely DTC device-tech players. “K-beauty built the [sheet] mask category, but LED is still up for grabs,” she said, describing a genuinely open competitive field, which is rare in beauty.
Hydrogel and bubble formats are the second front. Riba’s data showed bubble mask up +112.9% YoY and LED face masks up +74.5% YoY, both from a far larger base than niche clay variants. Speaking to BeautyMatter, Yanghee Paik, co-founder and CEO of Rael, credited engineered texture rather than marketing gloss. “Our hydrogel masks use a proprietary anti-slip grip to lock active ingredients into the skin,” a texture that, she noted, happens to create a stunning “glass skin look,” with efficacy and shareability arriving as one product decision, not two.
Even Ejikeme, whose category is devices rather than topicals, reinforced why clay reads as static by comparison. LED, she said, works by “upregulating mitochondria and increasing collagen production,” a mechanism she framed as building long-term skin health rather than delivering a single-session reset.
Beneath the LED headlines, clay’s growth is real, even if unglamorous. Riba’s Spate data showed kaolin clay masks up +295% YoY, though from a small base of 34,000 searches. “This makes it look like an emerging revival rather than a mainstream shift,” she said. Other clay and mud formats like Indian clay, bentonite, and mud masks are growing at a steadier 15%-42% YoY. “Clay is not being overtaken,” said Riba. “It is still the anchor of the category.”
Borghese is one of the brands spearheading this, with popular products like Fango, which has been a part of the brand for four decades. “Yes, clay is part of the formulation, but Fango combines mud with nourishing ingredients such as avocado oil and sweet almond oil, delivering multiple skincare benefits in one treatment,” Hilarczyk said. “That differentiates Fango from many single-purpose or single-benefit masks. It is not simply about one ingredient or one function. It is a complete treatment experience that combines efficacy with nourishment,” she claimed.
Brands leaning into the provenance of ritual, terroir, and a single-origin ingredient story are the ones retaining clay’s relevance without trying to out-spectacle LED. Wayman confirmed brands are adapting, not retreating. “[We’re] seeing greater emphasis on multifunctional benefits, proven efficacy, innovative formats, and elevated packaging,” she said, from clay-mask pitches specifically built to hold shelf space against LED and bubble formats.
She’s also confident about where she thinks the category is headed. “For clay specifically, we don’t see it as a legacy category. There is still strong potential for innovation through improved formulations, multifunctional benefits, and new formats that combine the purifying power of clay with hydration, barrier support, and clinically proven efficacy.” Ejikeme’s framing supports the same coexistence thesis rather than a winner-take-all fight. “Clay and LED,” she said, “work really well together, just like lots of different tools.”
What’s happening to the conversations, or silence, surrounding clay is a preview of a structural pivot in how beauty categories are valued. Perceived category health is increasingly a function of what performs on a nine-second video, not what shows up in a P&L. Clay is up 26% YoY in real revenue and remains the largest single trend in Spate’s popularity data. It is still being written off as legacy by trade conversation, because it doesn’t unbox, transform, or glow on camera the way LED and hydrogel do.
For operators, the lesson isn’t to abandon clay, especially because the data doesn’t support that. It is to stop confusing TikTok’s attention economy with category economics. Search and social virality are excellent leading indicators of where marketing budgets will chase next. They are a poor proxy for where the revenue actually is. “We believe the future is less about mud versus technology, and more about bringing the best of both together. Our opportunity is to take everything consumers love about Fango—efficacy, ritual, and results—and continue to modernize the experience through formulation, ingredient technology, sensoriality, convenience, and targeted benefits,” Hilarczyk said. “Our philosophy is simple: innovation should not erase heritage; it should make heritage relevant.”
Retailers and brands that treat the two as interchangeable risk starving a genuinely growing, high-retention category in favor of a smaller, faster-growing, but far more crowded one like LED, where, as Snell puts it, the competitive field is still wide open precisely because no one has won it yet.