Blending sponge

A blending sponge is a small egg of soft, open-pored foam, used damp. Wetted, it swells and holds water in its pores, and so takes up less of the foundation it touches. Bounced against the skin, it presses liquid or cream into a thin, even layer and lifts off the excess. The shape does the rest: the round base covers the cheeks and forehead, the point reaches the inner corner of the eye and the sides of the nose, and many are now cut with a flat face for pressing concealer on.

It is not the same tool as its neighbours. A wedge is denser and used dry, for more coverage and a clean edge; a silicone applicator absorbs nothing and spreads rather than presses; a cushion puff is flat, used dry to tap foundation from a compact. The blending sponge sheers a formula out as it presses it in, which is why it gives the most skin-like finish with liquid and cream.

Size. A full-size sponge is for foundation over the whole face. A mini, about the size of a fingertip, is for concealer under the eyes and around the nose, and a mid-size one suits cream blush. Shape. The classic egg is edgeless all round; others add a flat-cut face, a sharper point or several facets, which press product on more firmly and give a crisper line along the jaw.

Foam. Denser sponges give more coverage and softer ones a sheerer, dewier layer. Some are wrapped in microfibre, sold as absorbing less and as working damp or dry; others are sold as partly plant-based or compostable. Almost all are now sold as latex-free, which matters if you are allergic to natural rubber latex: check the pack, since the claim is the maker’s.

Wet the sponge until it stops growing, then squeeze it hard inside a towel: damp, not dripping, or the foundation slides and streaks. Put the product on the back of your hand, pick up a little on the round end, and bounce it over the skin from the centre of the face outward. Press and lift; never wipe, which drags the formula into stripes and wears the foam.

Use the point for the inner corners of the eyes, the sides of the nose and the corners of the mouth, and the flat face, where there is one, to press concealer onto a blemish. To bake, press a thick layer of loose powder under the eyes with the damp sponge, leave it a few minutes and sweep the excess away with a brush. Finish with a clean part of the sponge over any edge.

A damp sponge put away dirty is the tool to worry about. When Aston University researchers cultured used makeup donated in the UK, sponges were the most contaminated items: they averaged more than a million bacterial colony-forming units per millilitre, fungi turned up in over half of them, 93 per cent had never been cleaned, and 64 per cent had been dropped on the floor and used again.^[1]

Wash it after every use, as beautyblender advises: work in soap or a sponge cleanser, rinse and squeeze until the water runs clear, then leave it to dry completely in the open air, never shut in a pouch while damp and never under a hairdryer, which the company says damages the foam.^[2] Replace it on a schedule: the company says every three months, sooner with daily use;^[2] EcoTools tells buyers of its compostable sponge to clean it weekly and replace it after 30 days.^[3] Throw a sponge out sooner if it tears or stays stained after washing, and keep it to yourself.

The damp sponge is older than the egg. Cake make-up, which a wet applicator turned back into a liquid, needed one: Marinello’s Phantom Powder of 1914 came in a flat jar with a domed cap to hold its sponge, and a Max Factor advertisement for Pan-Cake in 1953 gave an instruction that still holds: “Use a sponge that’s wet, not just moist, and squeeze just short of the dripping point.”^[4] By then Harriet Hubbard Ayer was selling packets of foam-rubber sponges for “every item of make-up to the last dab of powder”, an idea that did not catch on: brushes and puffs were easier, and fitted in a compact.^[5]

The egg came from television. Rea Ann Silva, a makeup artist on the sets of Los Angeles, was working on Girlfriends, a sitcom that began on UPN in 2000 and was one of the first shows filmed in high definition, which showed every flaw. Airbrushing took actors off set and her sponges could not reach the corners of a face, so she cut her own, settling on an egg with no edges and a pointed tip, used wet, as a class for union makeup artists had taught her.^[6] The Smithsonian’s catalogue dates her first sponges to 2002 and records that by 2003 she had incorporated the company and the pink sponge was on sale.^[7] In the company’s own telling, her sponges kept disappearing from set, which is when she saw a business in them.^[8]

What was new was less the shape than the habit. Sponges had been used a few times and thrown away; this one was made to be washed and kept, worked with any brand’s makeup, and was carried by YouTube and social media from film sets to bathroom shelves. In 2008 the company moved to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and opened a factory where its sponges were cut by hand; the Smithsonian now keeps a run of Silva’s prototypes.^[6] Nearly every house below makes an egg of its own.