Collagen Type 1 and 3, Explained Simply

Type 1 and type 3 are the two collagens that build skin and most soft tissue: type 1 forms stiff, strong fibers, type 3 the elastic network around them. On a supplement label, the numbers mostly tell you which proteins your peptides came from.

This page sits in our beauty-from-within series — the full picture of what actually feeds hair, skin and nails is in hair, skin and nails supplements for women — but the type question deserves its own plain answer, because labels lean on it heavily.

What do “type 1” and “type 3” actually mean?

The numbers are positions in a catalogue. Scientists have identified 28 distinct collagens in the human body, numbered roughly in order of discovery — type 1 was simply found first. Each type is a different protein with its own structure and its own job in tissue; a supplement label that prints the numbers is borrowing that scientific catalogue.

Collagens are the most abundant proteins in mammals — a family described in the scientific literature as 28 members, each with at least one triple-helical domain. Only a handful of those types ever appear on supplement labels, and two of them dominate: 1 and 3.

What is the difference between type 1 and type 3 collagen?

Type 1 builds thick, stiff fibrils that give tissue its tensile strength; type 3 builds a finer, elastic network that lets the same tissue stretch and recover. Skin and blood-vessel walls contain both, woven together — strength from one, flexibility from the other — which is why the two are so often named in the same breath.

That division of labor is described across the tissue-injury literature: collagen I is characterized as a stiff fibrillar protein providing tensile strength, collagen III as an elastic network. Neither is “better” — your tissue uses both at once, in proportions it sets itself.

Why do type 1 and 3 appear together on supplement labels?

Because they come out of the raw material together. Type 1 and type 3 sit side by side in skin and connective tissue, so collagen extracted from sources like bovine hide naturally carries both. On most labels, “type 1 & 3” describes the source tissue rather than a deliberate formulation choice.

Marine collagen, made mostly from fish skin, is predominantly type 1 for the same reason. If what you are really weighing is a collagen powder against an organ blend that includes collagen, the formats differ far more than the type numbers do — we compared them line by line in collagen powder vs beef organs.

What about type 2 collagen — why is it missing from beauty formulas?

Type 2 is the collagen of cartilage, and it is sold for joints, not skin or hair. It comes from different raw material — typically chicken cartilage — and forms a different kind of fiber. A label reading “type 1 & 3” is telling you its collagen came from skin-like tissue, not cartilage.

A longer list of types mostly tells you a product blended more raw materials — bovine, fish, eggshell membrane — not that it will do more. Amounts, not type counts, are what a label can actually prove.

Does the type number still matter once collagen becomes peptides?

Less than the marketing suggests. Supplement collagen is broken into short peptide fragments, and the triple-helix structure that defines a native collagen type does not survive that processing. Afterward, the number reliably tells you which protein the fragments started as — not which type of collagen your body will build with them.

Your body digests collagen peptides much like any protein and rebuilds its own collagen from the amino acids — whichever type your tissue decides it needs. What happens between swallowing and skin, and what the evidence does and does not show, is the question we walked through in can you take collagen and beef organs together.

How much type 1 and 3 collagen did clinical trials use?

The trials behind collagen’s skin evidence used grams, not milligrams. A 2021 meta-analysis of 19 randomized trials — 1,125 participants, about 95% of them women — pooled hydrolyzed collagen doses of roughly 2.5 to 10 grams a day, taken for around 90 days. The analysis treated hydrolyzed collagen as one category; it did not score type 1 against type 3.

Our own two-capsule serving carries 500 mg of collagen peptides — 0.5 grams, five times below the bottom of that trial range, and we print the gap rather than round it away. How the three beauty ingredients on one panel add up — collagen, biotin and zinc — is worked through number by number in beef organ supplements with collagen, biotin and zinc.

What does the Women Bloom label say — word for word?

“Collagen Peptides Type I & III 500 mg” per two-capsule serving — that is the full line as printed on our panel. It does not name a source tissue, and we do not call the collagen hydrolyzed, because the supplier documentation that would confirm that wording has not reached us yet.

Everything else on the panel is printed the same way — nine ingredients, every dose in text, on the Supplement Facts page — and what a laboratory found in the finished product is on the Lab Tests page. When the supplier’s technical sheet arrives, this page will say more. Until then, the label line above is the entire claim.

The short version

Type 1 and type 3 are the two collagens of skin and soft tissue — one stiff and strong, one elastic — and they appear together on labels because they sit together in the raw material. Once processed into peptides, the type number records origin rather than structure: collagen supplies amino acids your body uses to build its own connective tissue.* The trials behind the category’s skin evidence used 2.5 to 10 grams a day; our panel prints 500 mg per serving, with every other dose beside it in text — the full formula is on the Women Bloom product page.

Last reviewed: August 2026. This article is general information, not medical advice. Talk to your physician or a registered dietitian before starting any supplement.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.