Simply prime your face, apply the concealer under your eyes, around your mouth and nose over any spots or blemishes and you've got yourself a super lightweight, yet flawless base.
While the majority of experts recommend applying a light layer of foundation before concealer, we admit there are instances where you benefit from a concealer first—if you're getting photographed, your concealer shade isn't the same as your foundation, and if you're color-correcting discoloration.
The general rule of thumb is that you should always opt for a shade lighter than foundation when choosing your concealer colour. Doing so helps to mask darker discolouration, but be careful not to over-correct! Knowing how to pick the right concealer is essential to ensuring that your look does not appear ghostly.
Makeup artists suggest trying different shades of concealer with a swatch test along your cheek and jawline. Applying a small amount of each concealer to your face is the best way to determine your shade match, but another option is to apply each shade to the inside of your wrist.
Look refreshed with yellow tones
To conceal dark circles, the same color wheel principle applies. People with fairer skin may opt for yellow, peach, or pink colored concealers. Darker skin may benefit more from an orange shade.
“You can't have a concealer that's too light,” she said, adding that women should choose concealer that's one to two shades lighter than the color of their foundation. “One to two shades … the right color blends itself. It makes a big difference."
Folks with more acne-prone skin or other skin conditions, however, might want to cover their entire face with concealer, to which Medhin says: If you need to, go for it. "You can also use concealer the same way you would use a full coverage foundation," she explains.
It's also essential to apply and blend concealer into the inner corners of the eyes. These inner corners can be just as dark as the circles—using concealer as a highlighter can brighten your face and make you look more awake (even if you only had a few hours of sleep the night before).
With a brush, you just cannot get a dewy finish. It is very difficult to spread the foundation and concealer uniformly over the skin. However, with a makeup sponge, you can apply them smoothly and get a very flawless natural look.
Leave The Concealer For at Least 10 to 20 Minutes
You can use this time to line your lips, style your hair, or fill in your eyebrows. Working with dark eyeshadow or doing a smokey eye look is not recommended during this time, since it can cause fallout under the eyes area.
Applying foundation first creates an even base to reduce overall redness, discoloration and minor blemishes. If you apply your concealer first, you may end up wiping some off when you apply foundation or using a lot more product than necessary, which can create a heavy, cakey look.
The first most important step while applying make up is to know what should be applied first between foundation or concealer. Well, the answer is that foundation should go first. The reason is that it is supposed to even out your skin tone and hide the blemishes and discoloration of skin that you hate so much.
Fingers are best for blending cream products - think concealers, foundations, cream blush, etc. This is because your body heat will blend and disperse better than a brush. The team at BIRCHBOX says it's all about the warmth. The warmth generates slip and movement of the product.
As Reiss-Andersen points out, concealer is designed to color-correct dark circles and spots, as well as blemishes, while foundation works to enhance the overall skin tone. “It's great to combine both concealer and foundation to make the skin look as radiant as possible,” she concurs.
So, do you use concealer before or after foundation? The proper way to apply the two products is to first smooth on a foundation and then apply your concealer. Foundation will create that even canvas we talked about earlier, and then concealer can be used to spot correct any outstanding areas that need extra coverage.
"Always go a shade lighter than your foundation." The lighter tone will cancel out dark discoloration, but be careful not to go too fair. Concealers that are more than one shade lighter than your skin tone can leave you with a ghostly shadow.
Here, the color wheel determines which color of concealer will work best on your blemish. Colors that are opposite of one another on the color wheel cancel each other out. Green concealer cancels out red zits, purple concealer minimizes yellow spots, and orange concealer takes care of blue dark circles.