Face + hair
Rambutan Seed Oil
Nourish, soften, glow
The seed, cold pressed into a bottle. The most direct way to try rambutan.
$67.9520 ml / 0.68 fl oz
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Discover RUMÉA
What is rambutan?Beauty's unexpected beginning.
A hairy red fruit from Southeast Asia, a sweet white center and a seed most people throw away. That seed is where RUMÉA starts.
Nephelium lappaceumNative to tropical Southeast Asia
Inside the fruit
Shell, flesh, seed.
Crack the soft spiky shell and you get translucent white flesh, sweet and a little floral, a lot like lychee. Eat that and you're left holding a smooth brown seed about the size of an almond.
Most of the world tosses it. We press it.
The shellRed, soft and covered in hair-like spines
The fleshThe sweet part everyone eats
The seedThe part RUMÉA is made from
The seed
The overlooked part became the extraordinary part.
Rambutan seeds are packed with natural fats. That's what makes them worth pressing, and why researchers have started paying attention to them as more than fruit waste.
23 to 26%Total lipid content
A 2024 study of three popular rambutan varieties measured 23.40 to 25.77 g of lipid per 100 g of seed.
Source: Cui et al., Food Chemistry: X, Vol. 23 (2024). Figures describe the seed samples analyzed in the study, not the performance of finished RUMÉA products.
What's in the oil
A fatty acid mix you don't see often.
Most plant oils lean heavily on one or two common fats. Rambutan seed oil pairs a big share of oleic acid with a lot of arachidic acid, which the researchers called uncommon among higher plants.
Read the science40%Oleic acid, approx.
Oleic acid came in at 39.84 to 40.92% across all three varieties. It's the same fat olive oil is known for.
From the 2024 study
Oleic acid39.84 to 40.92%
Arachidic acid28.45 to 30.23%
Tocopherols, top variety17.42 mg/kg
Squalene, top variety21.48 mg/kg
Lipid species identified807
Composition varies by variety. These are study values, not a guaranteed spec for RUMÉA products.
Where it grows
Rooted in the tropics.
Rambutan needs heat, humidity and a lot of rain. It's grown across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, where it shows up by the bagful at roadside stands every harvest season.
The name comes from the Malay word rambut, which means hair. Fair enough.
Botanical nameNephelium lappaceum
FamilySapindaceae, with lychee
Name meansHair, in Malay
Where the seed ends up
One ingredient.
Three expressions.
Every RUMÉA product traces back to the same seed. The oil is the seed oil and nothing else. The butter and the mask are full formulas built around it.
Body
Rambutan Body Butter
Nourish, condition, soften
Seed oil whipped into something thick enough for shins and heels.
$59.954 oz jar
Shop the body butter
Face
Rambutan Face Mask
Hydrate, brighten, revitalize
A once-a-week rambutan treatment for when your skin looks flat.
$10.9525 ml pouch
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Fruit to bottle
From seed to ritual.
Five steps between a tree in the tropics and the bottle on your shelf.
Harvested ripe and red.
Saved instead of tossed.
Cold pressed into oil.
Bottled pure or built into butter and mask.
On your shelf, face to feet.
Rambutan basics
Questions, answered.
The fruit side of things. Questions about the products themselves live on our homepage.
What is rambutan?
Rambutan is the fruit of the Nephelium lappaceum tree. It's about the size of a golf ball, with a red shell covered in soft hair-like spines, sweet white flesh inside and a single seed in the middle.
Is rambutan related to lychee?
Yes. Rambutan, lychee and longan are all in the soapberry family, Sapindaceae. Peel them and the white flesh looks almost the same. The giveaway is the shell, since rambutan is the hairy one.
Where does the name rambutan come from?
From the Malay word rambut, which means hair. One look at the shell and the name makes sense.
Where does rambutan grow?
Wet tropical climates. It's grown widely in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, and in parts of southern China, Central America and Hawaii.
Can you eat rambutan seeds?
We don't recommend it. The seed is bitter and isn't eaten raw. RUMÉA uses the oil pressed from the seed on skin and hair, not as food.
Why does rambutan seed oil composition vary between studies?
Because rambutan varieties and growing conditions differ. Research on Chinese and Malaysian varieties consistently finds oleic and arachidic acid as the two biggest fatty acids, but the exact percentages shift from one variety to the next.
Now you know
Three essentials.
One overlooked seed.
That's rambutan: a fruit most people have never tasted and a seed almost nobody keeps. Want the numbers behind it, or how to actually use it?