Can You Use Lipstick in Place of Concealer and Color Correctors?
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Question: Does using nude lipstick as concealer, and peach or red as a color corrector, really work?
Answer: If you’ve ever fallen down the rabbit hole that is the explore page on Instagram or gotten hypnotized into watching hours of beauty vlogs when all you needed was to double-check one step of a fishtail braid, then you’ve almost certainly seen lipstick being used in a hundred ways other than the intended one. But the makeup artists we asked aren’t sold. The main issue is the formula of lipstick: “It’s too waxy and greasy,” says Nick Barose. “For the average woman, it will be a disaster to blend and layer and if you use it under the eyes, it will crease and smudge. These tips only work on Instagram or in tutorials because nobody is looking at their makeup six hours later.” Not only that, using lipstick as concealer “may cause breakouts to become worse,” warns Molly Stern, who says the only way she’d do it is with a nude tinted lip balm for a bit of moisture under the eyes.
In a pinch when he didn’t have his color correcting palette, Rommy Najor says he has resorted to using lipsticks instead and offers some advice: “An orange/red (medium to fuller coverage lipstick) works best for someone whose imperfection leans towards a darker shadow, typically seen with darker skin tones around the mouth area. A peachy lipstick would work better for light to medium skin tones and perhaps extremely dark circles under the eyes. If you had a green lipstick, which I’m guessing most people don’t, but if you did, it’s helpful to cancel out the red in a blemish. If you decide to lay down the lipstick or any color corrector, you would follow up with concealer that matches your skin tone on top.”
