How to Cover Up a Blemish

Reading Time: 4 minutes A few days ago, a pretty angry looking blemish decided to pop up on my face. [ I blame all the eggnog and treats I’ve been consuming lately.] I don’t get blemishes often, but it seems that when I do they are always super red, super intense, and super painful which makes them quite a challenge to deal with and cover-up. But with this being such a lively and busy time of the year with holiday events, gatherings, and parties, covering it up has been a priority when I am getting ready.    

How to Cover Up a Blemish | How I Cover Up a Zit

1. Cleanse, Tone, and Moisturize

Before applying your makeup, you first want to focus so skincare. I cleanse, tone, and moisturize every morning (see my full AM Skincare Routine here!) and I exfoliate about 3 times a week. For me, skincare is always important, but it’s especially important when I have a blemish because 1) I want it to go away asap, and 2) cleansing your skin, exfoliating, and moisturizing will help remove any dry or rigid skin that will poke through your makeup. 

2. Use a Green Colour Corrector

Before applying foundation and concealer, I start by using a green colour corrector. This helps neutralize the redness in your skin, and will make your blemish look less intense. I use the Revlon Colour Correcting Pen in this video, but I’ve also used cream/pot colour correctors and those can be great if you prefer a thicker consistency. 

3. Use a Creamier Foundation with a Natural Finish

Rather than using a powder, or a matte liquid foundation, go for something that is creamier and in a natural finish, like the Emani Cream Compact Foundation. Matte foundations can look dry and often will emphasize bumps, dryness, and blemishes. A light-medium coverage foundation with a natural finish won’t look cakey on the skin, and you’ll be able to concentrate more of the product over your blemish without it drying down and clinging to it. By using a foundation with a light hand on the rest of your face, your blemish won’t look like it’s being heavily covered, instead, it’ll just fade into the rest of your makeup and look natural. 

4. Use a Thinner/Liquid Concealer

Since I used a creamier foundation, I decided against using a cream concealer. Sometimes layering creams (especially to cover a blemish since you won’t be blending the concealer out much as you want it to be most concentrated over the blemish to really cover it up) can look heavy and actually make your blemish more obvious. Instead, I used Tarte’s Aquacealer which is quite thin and won’t add a lot of product to the area, it’ll just add a light wash of colour to further hide the redness of the blemish. 

5. Set with a Setting Spray

To finish the look off, I always use Setting Spray. This will help keep my makeup in place and also it’ll add more hydration into my makeup which will help prevent my makeup from clinging to my blemish.  

What About a Cream Based Concealer?

Day to day, if I want to quickly conceal my blemish, I will use a cream concealer. I personally just do not like to layer cream upon cream (note: I am not speaking about blush or highlighters as those products you really blend out when you apply them over your foundation) when I am covering up a blemish because when I apply the concealer I leave the most product on the zit; this is fine if it’s the only layer of product, but when it’s layered over other products it can appear very heavy and cakey. In today’s How to Cover Up a Blemish Tutorial, I am going out and wearing a full face of makeup and I am already wearing a creamier foundation so using a cream concealer just isn’t something I would typically do. Let me know if you’d like to see a tutorial on just how I cover up quickly day to day when I am not wearing glam makeup. 

Why Don’t I Use a Setting Powder? 

I don’t use a lot of setting powder all over my face to begin with because I have dry skin and oftentimes powder emphasizes that. When I have a blemish that has ridges, and dryness, I especially avoid powder as it will make my makeup cling to it.