Face Makeup: Your Ultimate Guide (2023)

Real skin has texture and looks nothing like the highly done-up, edited, and photoshopped images you see online.

Read that again.

It’s easy to become frustrated when you attempt to use the techniques (and we use that term very loosely) you see on a makeup influencer’s channel and don’t get the same, polished, perfect skin results that their filter-use gave them.

The problem is, there’s a giant chasm of false advertising between what we see online and in print (and even on screen) and what we actually look like in person. That goes for influencers, celebrities, and you and me.

Still, it’s completely possible to use face makeup to accentuate the beautiful skin you have, blur imperfections you don’t want the world to see, and create a healthy-looking radiance that actually looks real and believable.

Here’s our how-to guide for creating skin that looks real and radiant with face makeup.

What is Face Makeup?

Obviously, most all makeup goes somewhere on your face, so technically, it’s all “face” makeup. When we say face makeup, however, we usually mean makeup that is used to even out skin tone, hide imperfections, and create a healthy glow.

These can be:

• Primer
• Concealers
• Blush
• Foundations
• Highlighters
• Bronzers
• Luminzers
• Powders

It’s important to remember there are many tools, but you don’t need to use all of them at once, and some you may not want to use period, which brings us to the difference between face makeup and “full-face” makeup.

Face Makeup vs. Full-Face Makeup

Face makeup consists of the products we listed above. They’re used to create certain looks, prepare your skin for color cosmetics, and highlight and enhance your natural skin.

Full-face makeup is everything in the bag. It’s what the kids call a “full beat.” It’s usually more glam, highly done up, consists of numerous layers of primer, foundation, concealer, blush, powder, and looks like it will take hours to remove (and it probably does).

Don’t get us wrong, there are times when you’ll want full-face makeup, especially if you have an event that will be photographed or you’ll be under bright lights in front of an audience. For the rest of your life, you’ll probably just need a few products from your face makeup collection.

What Are the Steps For Face Makeup?

Depending on how much coverage you want, you can skip some of these steps, but never skip moisturizing. Every skin type needs moisture, even if you feel your skin is oily.

Moisturize Your Face

Even if you’re leaving the house sans makeup, always moisturize your face. Moisturizer helps nourish your skin, protect it, and prevent moisture loss. If you are wearing foundation or other makeup products, it will also ensure that your skin doesn’t absorb them.

One we love: RMS Beauty’s Raw Coconut Cream. Our coconut cream isn’t run of the mill. It’s pure, raw, unrefined, cold-centrifuged, food-grade oil. That means all the skin-quenching ingredients and beneficial nutrients are completely intact and available for your skin to absorb and use.

Coconut cream has antibacterial, antimicrobial, and antifungal properties, which makes it incredibly beneficial for sensitive or blemish-prone skin.

Our coconut cream is a multitasker that works as a moisturizer and as a makeup remover, which we’ll discuss below.

Apply Primer

A primer helps smooth your skin’s surface and allows your foundation to go on more smoothly. By creating a seal over your skin, it ensures your makeup doesn’t get absorbed into your pores or hideout in fine lines and wrinkles.

One to try: RMS Beauty’s “Re” Evolve Radiance Locking Primer. Our groundbreaking primer is the cleanest in the industry and contains ingredients that help makeup lock tight to its surface while simultaneously working to reverse the signs of aging.

We infused our primer with Tigthenyl, a cutting-edge ingredient that increases skin’s firmness and helps smooth the surface. We also added the highest quality hyaluronic acid for hydration, vegetable squalane for improved elasticity, and eggplant fruit extract to bolster your skin’s barrier function and protect it from pathogens.

You can also use a beauty oil as a primer, which may be especially helpful for dry skin types. Our beauty oil is infused with jojoba oil, rosehip oil, wildcrafted buriti oil, and RMS’s adaptogenic herbal blend to keep your skin fully hydrated and moisturized for 24 hours.

Layer Your Cream Foundation

Liquid foundation can settle easily into fine lines and cake into wrinkles. Powder foundation can be drying, and even if you have oily skin it can just soak it up.

Cream formulas work much better and are generally lighter in consistency. Your foundation should be buildable, so you can easily add more coverage where you need it.

One to try: RMS “Un” Cover-Up Cream Foundation. Our foundation creams are made to work synergistically with your skin, not cover it up and mask its beauty and radiance. Our buildable blend of jojoba infused with our signature beauty oil allows your true skin to shine through while giving you just enough mineral color for beautiful coverage.

Caking in lines and wrinkles? Forget about it. Less around the eyes and crows feet avoids buildup and accenting these sensitive and aging areas. Remember: Less is more in these areas

Conceal Undesired Spots

Concealer can give you extra coverage where you need it without the need to apply another layer of foundation.

Although the under-eye area is by far the most popular hangout for concealers, slathering it underneath your eye can highlight fine lines, wrinkles, and sagging skin making you look older. Concentrate on only covering the bag or discoloration, not the whole under-eye.

For a more in-depth look on how to properly use concealer (and avoid raccoon eyes) click here.

One to try: RMS Beauty “Un” Cover-Up Concealer. Our concealer uses self-adjusting minerals like iron oxides and non-nano titanium dioxide to cover blemishes. There are no drying agents like talc or clay here — no one wants heavy, chalky makeup.

Use Bronzer To Get a Sun-Kissed Look

Especially in summer months, nothing makes you feel sexier than a healthy, golden glow. It’s not worth the risk to sit without SPF in the sun, so fake it with a bit of bronzer on the bridge of your nose, a sweep across the forehead, and on the apples of your cheeks.

We recommend using a bronzer on the areas of your skin that would be kissed by the sun. Don’t try to contour with a bronzer — no sun tan makes a contour. Also be cautious of color — go too orange or red and you’ll end up with a ruddy (sometimes dirty-looking) complexion.

One to try: RMS Beauty’s Buriti Bronzer. A hydrating formula that nourishes skin and keeps it looking dewy, radiant, and bronzed with just the right amount of sheen.

Warm Things Up With Blush

If a bronzer isn’t your go-to, or if you’d rather choose a different look for winter months, opt for a blush on the apples of your cheeks. You don’t need much, just enough to make it look like you’re genuinely blushing.

Our favorite: RMS Beauty’s Lip2Cheek. This multitasker is a blendable cream formula that can go on cheeks and lips. Ultra-hydrating and long-lasting, our Lip2Cheek comes in numerous, natural-looking shades that work for every skin tone.

Illuminate With Highlighter

Better yet, grab a luminizer. After all, our founder, Rose-Marie Swift, invented them.

Luminizers are a hybrid combination of a highlighter and an illuminator. They highlight areas with an ethereal sweep of color that is never glittery or greasy. Our Luminizer is made with hydrating, skin-nourishing ingredients and can be used to give your skin a healthy, light-reflective radiance that is unmatched by any other product.

Our favorite spots to luminize? Swipe a bit on the bridge of the nose, cupid’s bow, center of the eyelids, cheek bones, and even the center of the lips over lipstick.

The RMS luminizer is so popular, we wrote an entire how-to guide detailing how to properly use it to get amazing, radiant skin.

DON’T Finish With Setting Spray or Setting Powder

Seriously. You don’t need hairspray for your face. Stop adding drying agents to your beautiful skin! (All it does is defeat the purpose of using clean ingredients in your skin care and makeup.)

If you start with quality products that have clean, nourishing ingredients, they’ll naturally stay put on your face and help keep your skin looking hydrated and healthy.

Besides, most setting sprays are full of toxic, drying agents that dehydrate the skin, cause it to flake, and expose your body to harmful chemicals.

What is Baking? Is It Important?

Baking is an old-fashioned makeup “setting” technique used mostly with concealer under the eyes. In the baking method, large amounts of liquid concealer are glopped on under the eyes and topped off with an excessive amount of loose powder.

After about ten minutes, the excess powder is brushed off. This is thought to help make concealers last longer, but in reality, it is completely ineffective and serves only to give you massive eye circles. Not to mention, all that makeup settles into every line and wrinkle it can find making your skin look dry, dehydrated, and old.

The takeaway: baking was popular in the ’80s when on-stage movie stars partied too late and needed to cover up their tired eyes. It was also used because it did work with the old movie and TV lighting in those days, but that light is no longer used in the industry.

It dries the skin, flakes off, and absolutely kills your youthfulness. Just say no.

How Can I Remove Face Makeup?

Makeup can easily be removed without the use of toxic, oil-free cleansers that contain scary chemicals. All you need is raw coconut cream. Our Ultimate makeup remover wipes contain just one ingredient, our pure, organic, raw coconut cream.

You can even use them to remove waterproof mascara.

Conclusion

Focus on being able to see your face when you apply your face makeup; not cover it up. Your own skin is beautiful, and with very little effort you can have radiant, youthful-looking skin without too many products or senseless layers of makeup.

At RMS Beauty, we formulate our cosmetics to do more than just conceal and highlight; our products work like skin care, with skin-nourishing ingredients that are intentional and beneficial for your skin. From our eyeshadows to our lipsticks and lip liners, you’ll find the cleanest, purest ingredients in the industry.

Simplify your makeup routine with less face makeup products, better makeup application, and the cleanest ingredients with RMS Beauty.

Sources:

Coconut Oil Properties|NCBI

Jojoba Oil and Sebum|PubMed

Therapeutic Applications of Rose Hips from Different Rosa Species|NCBI