Tinted moisturiser

A tinted moisturiser is what its name says: a moisturiser — a cream or lotion of water, oils and humectants, made to hold water in the skin’s outer layer^[1] — with enough pigment added to even out its tone. The coverage is sheer to light, the finish usually dewy or satin, and most carry a sunscreen, so that one step does the work of three. It goes on like skincare, with the fingertips, as the last step of the morning routine.

Its neighbours overlap, and makers use the names loosely. A skin tint is thinner and more fluid — sometimes a serum in a dropper bottle — and less concerned with moisturising. A BB cream usually covers more and is sold on a longer list of skincare claims; a CC cream is built to neutralise redness or sallowness. Foundation is made to cover first. Tinted moisturiser is the one of these that is a moisturiser before it is makeup — which is why it suits dry skin best, and why on oily skin it can be one layer too many. When a product calls itself two of these at once, as many do, go by the coverage and finish it claims.

Choose by skin first. Dry skin suits a creamier formula with a dewy or radiant finish, and may need nothing else underneath. Oily or combination skin does better with a gel-cream or a formula sold as semi-matte, worn over little or no moisturiser, since the product is one already. If you prefer mineral sunscreen filters — zinc oxide, titanium dioxide — several makers now use them in tinted formulas.

Shade is more forgiving than with foundation, because so little pigment is involved, but undertone still shows: a tint that leans too pink or too yellow reads as a cast rather than as colour. Ranges are often shorter than for foundation, and some are sold in broad bands rather than exact shades. A bronzing tinted moisturiser is a different tool again — worn to warm the face, not to match it.

Apply it as the last step of skincare, on skin that is still slightly soft from moisturiser but no longer wet — or, on oily skin, on bare skin after a light serum, since a tinted moisturiser is a moisturiser too. Warm a small amount between the fingertips and sweep it outward from the centre of the face, then pat a little more over the places that need it: the sides of the nose, the chin, any redness on the cheeks. Sweeping spreads the colour thin; patting presses it in.

Take it past the jaw rather than stopping at it, so the colour fades out instead of ending in a line, and blend the edges into the hairline. Concealer goes on afterwards, and only where it is needed. Set, if at all, with a light press of powder down the centre of the face; a full powdering turns a tinted moisturiser into something flatter and heavier than it was. On a long day, blot rather than powder again, and press a little more on with a fingertip where it has worn.

Most tinted moisturisers carry an SPF, and the number is the maker’s claim. In the United States it is measured on a set layer of two milligrams of product to every square centimetre of skin.^[2] How it is spread matters as much. In a study published in 2019, 84 people applying an SPF 30 moisturiser as they normally would missed about a sixth of the face — more than when the same people used sunscreen — and more of the eyelid area too, without noticing.^[3] Those moisturisers were untinted, but the habit is the same.

If you rely on the SPF, use more than feels necessary, take it to the hairline, jaw and ears, and do not skip the area around the eyes. Otherwise, treat the sunscreen in a tinted moisturiser as a bonus, and wear a sunscreen underneath it.

The moisturiser came first. The word was applied to skin creams only in the 1950s, after the Harvard researcher Irvin H. Blank showed that it is water in the skin’s outer layer, not oil, that keeps it supple; by the 1960s, moisturising was what most people expected a skin cream to do.^[4]

When colour was first added to such a cream is harder to say, and the record we have does not settle it. Laura Mercier’s Tinted Moisturizer, launched with her brand in 1996, has been called the world’s first by at least one London newspaper.^[5] A sponsored feature in British Vogue, written in partnership with the brand, says instead that the idea came from “the French idea of a sheer tinted moisturiser” — which suggests the category is older than the claim.^[6] By 2019, when that product was reformulated, it carried SPF 20, raised then to 30, and its shades went from 15 to 20, sorted by undertone.^[5]

The category had a notable year in 2020. With American prestige makeup sales down by a third and lip products falling furthest under face masks, tinted moisturiser was among the few face products to gain market share.^[7] A base that asks little of the skin suited a year in which, for many people, little was asked of the face.