BB cream

A BB cream is a tinted cream that sets out to do several jobs at once: moisturise, even the tone, blur what is uneven and, in most versions, protect with a sunscreen. The trade defines it only loosely, as serum, moisturiser, primer, foundation and sunscreen in one. Most are oil-in-water emulsions, and they carry markedly less pigment than a foundation — typically between 0.5 and 5 per cent — relying on light-diffusing powders for the rest of the effect.^[1]

Among the light bases it sits in the middle. It covers more than a skin tint or a tinted moisturiser, and less than a foundation, and it is sold on more skincare claims than any of them. The CC cream is its sibling, pitched at correcting colour — redness, sallowness — rather than at covering. Even the letters are loose: “blemish balm” in Asia, “beauty balm” in parts of Europe,^[1] and on several of the packs on this page, “beauty balm” again.

Decide first how much you want it to cover. BB creams made for Asian markets have generally been made to hide more; Western ones are usually more transparent.^[2] A Korean BB will often do the work of a light foundation, and a drugstore “beauty balm” the work of a tinted moisturiser. Neither is wrong, but they are not interchangeable.

Then the finish. Many BB creams are formulated with oily skin in mind, with powders that take up sebum;^[2] others are dewy. If yours goes flat and dry by lunchtime, the fault is the finish, not you. Check the shade range too: BB ranges are often shorter than foundation ranges, and some stop well before the deepest shades.

Finally, read the claims as claims. The sunscreen figure is the maker’s. Formulas sold in Asia often include skin-lightening or “brightening” ingredients;^[2] if you would rather not wear one, the ingredient list, not the front of the pack, is where to look.

Shade is where BB creams most often go wrong. Korean ranges are usually named by number — 21 for a light shade, 23 for light-to-medium — and have long been short at the deep end, while some drugstore BBs come in only a handful of broad shades. Swatch on the jaw rather than the hand, and judge in daylight after a few minutes: many BB creams look paler or greyer in the tube than they do once settled on the skin.

If a BB cream looks ashy on deeper skin, more blending will not fix it; the shade is too light, too pink, or both. A warmer or deeper shade from the same range will, if the range has one. Where it does not, a tinted moisturiser or a skin tint from a house with a wider range is the better choice. The letters on the tube matter less than the match.

Use less than you think. A BB cream is thicker than a tint, and a pea-sized amount covers most faces. Dot it on the forehead, cheeks, nose and chin, then pat it in with the fingertips, working outward; patting presses it into the skin, where rubbing drags it and leaves it streaked at the edges.

A damp teardrop sponge sheers it out and lifts off what you do not need — the easiest way to make a Korean BB look like skin. Give it a minute to settle before judging the colour, then add concealer only where something still shows. Powder the parts that shine, and leave the rest.

The BB cream began in Germany, though the details depend on who is telling it. The company that still sells the German original — Blemish Balm, from the house of the dermatologist Christine Schrammek — dates it to 1967 and calls it “the original”.^[3] A trade account of 2013 places it in the 1960s and says she made it to protect the skin of a patient after surgery — but its only reference for the story is a piece written by Garnier’s own experts for the Huffington Post.^[4] Every account agrees on a German dermatologist. The year is the company’s, and the patient and the purpose are a story retold rather than a record.

Korea is where a treatment balm became an everyday base. The same trade account puts the balm’s arrival there in 1985, and says BB creams went on to take a large share of the Korean market — typically made to cover more than Western versions, and often sold with skin-lightening ingredients.^[4] By the time they reached American shops they had been sold in Korea for years as all-in-one skincare and makeup. In early 2011 the Korean brand Dr. Jart introduced two BB creams at Sephora in the United States; versions from L’Oréal, Smashbox, Clinique, Jane Iredale, Stila and Dior followed.^[5]

The crossing changed the product. Western BB creams were made sheerer, and the B, for “blemish” in Asia, was often read in the West as “beauty”.^[4] But what travelled was less a formula than an idea — that a base could be sold as skincare — and it opened American shelves to Korean beauty more broadly.^[5] The CC cream and the cushion compact came the same way.