Kojic acid (KA) and hydroquinone (HQ) are depigmenting agents widely used in association for the treatment of skin pigmentation disorders. A simple and selective electroanalytical method for the simultaneous determination of KA and HQ in skin-whitening cosmetics was developed. The redox peak potentials were separated on a GCE. KA exhibits a well-defined irreversible oxidation peak at 0.72 V and HQ a quasi-reversible redox peak at 0.09 V and 0.02 V, in McIlvaine buffer (pH 8.0). Under the SWV conditions optimized by 2(3) factorial design (a =40 mV,f = 40 s(-1) and Delta E-S =1 mV), the calibration curves were obtained in the concentration range of 3.5 x 10(-5) to 2.5 x 10(-4) mol L-1 (R = 0.9996) for KA and 1.5 x 10(-5) to 1.6 x 10(-4) mol L-1 (R = 0.9994) for HQ, with detection limits of 7.84 x 10(-6) mol L-1 and 3.71 x 10-6 mol L-1 respectively. The SWV method was validated in terms of specificity, linearity, range, precision, and accuracy. This method has been applied to the direct determination in real samples, with a relative error from 1 to 15% (RSD < 5%) for KA and from 1.5 to 13% (RSD < 5%) for HQ. (C) 2015 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.