L’Oréal is set to raise the price for the .makeup domain name significantly, from US$300 to almost US$5,000 a year from April 14, according to a report published by Domain Name Wire.

The French beauty giant initially intended to keep the gTLD, designating it along with .beauty, which it also owns, as ‘exclusive access’ but was overruled by the ICANN community, who mandated that generic strings remain open for registration.

However, with no caps on pricing, the way is open for L’Oréal to effectively close the domain name to all but wealthiest applicants. L’Oréal has also placed a number of restrictions on registrants, with generic terms such as ‘shop’ barred.