When we think of concealer, we usually think of it simply as a cream or liquid pigment we spread on top of blemishes, redness, under-eye bags, and other imperfections. We also have seen it used as a contour and sculpting tool in recent years.
Just like with every step of your makeup routine, there’s a right and wrong way to apply and wear light coverage, medium coverage, or full coverage concealer. The type, quantity, and tools used can make all the difference in the world. In addition, the concealer you choose can depend on your skin type and specific skincare concerns, such as managing dark spots or covering up breakouts or under-eye circles.
Read on to learn more about our lightweight, buildable coverage cream concealer, why we think it’s one of the best beauty products out there, and how to find the best color in the shade range for you.
Concealer Needs To Be Smooth, Buildable, and Lightweight
When on the hunt for the best cosmetic products, whether eye cream or SPF, you want to look for items that will work for you and not against you. The best concealer is smooth, lightweight, and buildable, as opposed to being thick and heavy upon first application, like some waterproof concealers tend to be.
As the old saying goes, easy does it. Thinner, lighter products will be easier to apply, last longer, and look better throughout the day. Heavier layers do not spread out as evenly and will melt away if it’s hot outside or start to crinkle and separate if it’s cold or your skin is too dry. In addition, if you have oily skin, heavier makeup products — including some concealers — can do more harm than good.
Concealer that can be applied in lighter layers will allow your skin to breathe more, something that will gradually show in the long run. Our under-eye skin is very thin and delicate, making it one of the first places that fine lines, wrinkles, hyperpigmentation, and other signs of aging show up in mature skin, even as soon as your early 20s.
Letting your skin breathe and preventing excess product from settling into your fine lines is one of the best things you can do for yourself to keep your face looking fresh today and years into the future.
Our Cream Concealer is an awesome, multi-dimensional product with multiple uses. It is creamy enough to be spread all over as a hybrid foundation, in addition to its traditional under-eye or blemish coverage. In a pinch, it’s also a great eyeshadow primer. To brighten up your under eyes and cover blemishes or other red spots, opt for a shade lighter than what you would use all over your face.
Concealer Needs To Look Natural
The best concealer is not only lightweight, breathable, and buildable. It also still allows you to shine through as you are. A concealer is supposed to conceal minor imperfections — not you!
A few years ago, it seemed as if the entire world rediscovered concealer all at once. Huge, upside-down triangles of thick liquids were painted onto our under eyes with oversized doe foot applicators, in what may have been about five shades too light for our skin tones. Thankfully, we’ve come a long way and see how much better a lightweight brightening concealer looks on dark circles, blemishes, and other imperfections.
The right concealer will get the job done without the feeling of being weighed down. A lightweight formula will blend in naturally to your skin, will last longer than thicker formulas, won’t look cakey or greasy, and above all, will look just like your natural, beautiful skin.
Small but mighty, our Cream Concealer also contains enough product for 60+ applications. Only a small amount is needed to achieve a naturally radiant yet blurred appearance and a glowing face.
Hailed by people as light enough to use with foundation but with enough coverage to make a difference on its own, it makes for the perfect multitasking addition to your Makeup Stack.
Concealer Needs To Hydrate Your Skin
In the category of things that need to work for you and not against you, let’s turn to one of the unpleasantries often associated with concealer. It seems like there are so many formulas out there that separate, crease, and bury themselves within the fine lines of our skin all too easily. Our under eyes have dozens of fine lines that aren’t always caused by our age, making everyone a victim of this unfortunate side effect.
Many cream or liquid concealers are not hydrating at all, which is particularly problematic for a product that is supposed to be applied to the under eyes or on top of blemishes. Our delicate under-eye area already needs as much hydration as possible!
That’s why many women use hyaluronic acid, vitamin E, or vitamin C serum under their eyes — these moisturizingantioxidants, along with peptides and collagen, are thought to lock in moisture without being too harsh for sensitive skin. You can either find a concealer that includes some of these ingredients or layer them underneath your concealer.
If your skin is dehydrated, your face will actually go into a type of “crisis mode” and start to overproduce oil to compensate for the lack of moisture you are currently suffering from. This is a recipe for a faded-away face and a sloppy, goopy mess.
Furthermore, if a cream cosmetic product is drying, the pigment will separate and look super heavy, giving your skin a texture that may not have even been there before (especially if you layer powder on top). If you are trying to hide redness and irritation caused by an angry pimple, this can cause the blemish to dry up, flake, and give your skin unwanted texture, completely defeating the purpose of using concealer in the process.
Concealer Needs To Be the Right Shade
Probably most importantly, your concealer needs to be the right color! This can be difficult to achieve with typical drugstore concealers, which often don’t have quite as large a range of shades.
To find the right shade, you should not swab pigment onto the back of your hand or on the lighter side of your forearm. Instead, what a makeup artist would recommend is to try a little bit directly on your cheek. This is the only way to find the true shade for your face.
Check out our website and use our extensive shade matching tool to match one of your other current concealers to one of our 19 shades, ranging from fair to deep, with multiple undertones available. Our shade matching tool offers tons of brands to use as a comparison, guaranteeing you an easy matching experience.
Extra Coverage, Without the Cake
If you apply the first layer of concealer but it’s not enough to cover up whatever you need to be hidden, simply dab on a little bit more. Remember, just like with cooking — you can always add but you can’t always take away. Using our Applicator to press translucent powder down will lock your pigment in place, making sure it doesn’t go anywhere.
Another great way to get the most out of your product without packing on too many layers is to let the concealer sit and absorb into your skin for a few minutes before you set it with translucent powder. If you've noticed the product has started to accumulate within lines, simply blend it into place with a finger, sponge, or brush before applying your translucent powder.
Our cruelty-freeCream Concealer is one of the more buildable coverage formulas out there and offers you a medium level of coverage without causing any discoloration or creating an unnatural look. Our hydrating concealer’s formula is moisturizing to prevent unwanted dry patches. It alsoseamlessly melts into the skin without being too greasy, and is easily set into place with a little bit of pressed powder for a natural finish.
It is so creamy many of our customers opt to use it as a foundation hybrid to provide a bit of color-correcting coverage on all areas of the face as opposed to only using it as a simple spot corrector.
Concealer Needs To Be the Right Undertone
Our concealer comes in 19 shades, ranging from fair to deep, ensuring everyone can find their perfect match. Across the various colors, we also offer different undertones, an important factor many people may not consider when choosing a color. Our concealer is available in light, neutral, warm, golden, and olive undertones. If you’re not sure what your undertone is, there is a super simple way to tell.
Look at the veins on your hands and wrists. What color are they? Are they green, blue, or purple? Maybe they are a combination of these colors.
If your veins are a shade of green, you have a warm undertone. Warmer undertone can range from golden to orange or yellow to olive and may look sallow at times.
If your veins are a combination of purple, blue, or indigo, you have a cool undertone. Cool undertones appear pink or blue on lighter complexions and purple or red on deeper complexions with red patches being a little more noticeable than on other skin tones.
Some of us might have a combination of these colors in our veins, or a very middle-of-the-road, general blue shade. If you fall into this category, you should opt for products with a neutral undertone.
The wrong undertone can have the same effect on your skin as selecting the wrong shade, making you look yellow, orange, washed out, and just a little bit off in general.
Sometimes, You Need a Different ConcealerShade for Winter and Summer
Another thing to keep in mind is how your skin tone may fluctuate throughout the year depending on weather, sun exposure, and if you plan on traveling. The color of your skin can quickly change after an afternoon outing, lakeside jog, or beach vacation.
How many times have you headed out to the coast for a few days during the summertime and come home to settle back into your regular routine, only to discover your makeup is way too light for your new sunkissed glow?
For those of us who spend the winter in cities where the sun rises late and sets early, or places like Seattle where it is overcast a great deal of the time, the limited sun means staying indoors and covering up in layers, making it tough to get a tan.
On the contrary, if you live in a city where spending lots of time at the pool, going out boating, hiking, or enjoying the trail are regular parts of life, these routine outings will add some color to your skin, even if you are not trying to get a tan.
No matter what climate you live in, you’ll eventually be blessed with a change in the weather, which will welcome a change to your makeup routine. While it may not be too dramatic of a change or be visible overnight, you might need to eventually go up or down a shade.
The Best Concealer Is Also Multi-Functional
If you’re looking at going a little bit lighter or a single shade darker, you may as well also look at going a few shades darker. Our Cream Concealer can also be applied to the hollows of your cheeks, jawline, forehead, and nose as a cream contour, then blended out with a makeup sponge or stamped into the skin with a flat top brush.
With its buildable, super spreadable formula, this is a perfect way to add dimension to your face without going overboard. Once you’ve blended it out, you should set it with translucent powder and a little bit of powder bronzer on top to really take your contour to another level.
You can add one shade to your cart, two, or however many you may want or need. Purchasing a few different shades of concealer might be a good idea if you are heading out of town soon to a place with a different climate, or simply if it’s close to being that time of year again when the seasons change.
A Different Type of Highlighter
If you’ve used a darker shade as a contour, a lighter shade, corresponding with the color of your under-eye concealer, is a great way to even further define contouring. After you have applied your deeper shade of concealer to the hollows of your cheeks, blend it out with either a damp makeup sponge or a brush.
Using a steady finger or a smaller precision brush, apply the lighter shade of concealer directly underneath the darker shade in a straight line from your temples and toward the center of your face, stopping about an inch away from your nose and the edge of your lips.
Then, blend out the lighter shade but take care to not blend it upward and into the darker shade. Instead, blend it away from the deeper shade, making sure you don’t blur that sharp line. This will create a super-defined effect and give you cheekbones to kill for.
You can also do the same thing with your jawline concealer. Apply it in the same manner both above and below the darker shade and blend outward, away from the darker pigment, making sure you follow that fine line. This will create the optical illusion of an almost unreal jawline capable of cutting glass.
Conquer Your Fear of Muddy Nose Contouring
Our concealer is creamy enough that you can also use it to contour the nose without fear of looking muddy or dirty, which is an unfortunate side effect that often occurs. Instead of applying the darker shade with precision and stressing about just exactly how it will blend without running together, take a little bit (literally, the smallest amount) of your deeper shade and apply it up and down your nose.
Then, take a small precision brush and draw a line down the center of your nose with your lightest shade. Next, buff that out with a makeup brush or sponge.
Just like with the jawline, you could take it a step further and draw a vertical line on both outer edges of your nose with the lighter concealer and blend outward, away from the deeper shade, while also following that sharp line, to further enhance the appearance.
The Best Concealer Is Also an All-Over Solution
While the right concealer should be lightweight, buildable, hydrating, and look just like your skin, we believe the best concealer is also a multi-functional one. Every single step of our Makeup Stacks has multiple purposes and a simple yet functional design, so we wanted to make sure our Cream Concealer, the very foundation of your routine, also fits the bill.
When we say we want it to be the foundation of your routine, we mean it quite literally. Yes, it’s a great way to chisel out cheekbones and naturally lift your face, but it’s also perfect if you just want a bare, clean canvas for a casual day out.
Our oil-free concealer is so spreadable that it can be applied across your whole face to give you a fresh and radiant finish. It is also spreadable enough you could dab it directly onto your face and blend it out with your fingers for a really quick solution on chaotic mornings.
Out the Door in a Flash
For an on-the-go application, take a clean finger, swirl it around the tray to warm the product up a little bit, then tap it onto your face, starting in the center and working outward in sections. Avoid dotting the concealer all over your face before blending it in. This could cause the product to prematurely dry on your skin before you have a chance to blend it in, making it look uneven or patchy in some spots.
For a little more precision, take a beauty sponge and hold it underneath your faucet, squeezing it a few times to absorb the water. After you squeeze out any excess moisture, your sponge will be larger and not nearly as stiff, making it easy to cover a lot of area at once, including hard-to-reach crevices, like the ones around your nose. It’s also a good idea to gently squeeze it out in a towel a few times afterward.
Dab your sponge around in the tray a few times and then apply it directly to your face. Start in the middle of your face working outward, making sure you don’t miss your neck. Dip back into the tray as needed but remember not much product will be necessary.
A full, flat top brush is another great tool to use. Start by gently swirling the brush into the concealer and then onto your skin, blending outward.
Eye Primer in a Pinch
Just like you would prime your cabinets before painting them, you should prime your eyes before applying eyeshadow. This will help your eyeshadow pop and look better for longer, allowing you to avoid under-eye smudging and pesky raccoon eyes. Our Cream Concealer can be used as an eyeshadow primer, setting you up with an awesome base for beautiful, long-lastingeyeshadow.
Again, not much product will be needed. Gently pat your ring finger into the pan a few times then dab the concealer onto your eyelid and into the crease, blending upward and outward as you go.
After you have spread out the concealer, you’ll want to get to work on your eyeshadow look pretty immediately. Eyeshadow, just like setting powder, will help lock the concealer in place, in turn giving you a super bright and vibrant eye look. How’s that for multi-functional?
The Best Concealer
The right concealer is lightweight and super blendable, and should easily melt into your skin to create a natural, radiant finish, as opposed to sitting on top of it and making you look overly made up.
A magical product with multiple purposes, our Cream Concealer is great for mornings when you’re dashing out the door in five minutes, or also for those evenings where you want to add a little something special to your routine.
Our buildable formula is lightweight and hydrating, making sure you never look cakey or greasy. Plus, it easily sets in place with our translucent pressed powder to make sure it lasts all day. Use our comprehensive shade matching tool to find your shade and the perfect addition to your Makeup Stack today.
Sources:
Do Your Makeup Habits Harm Your Skin? | Revere Health