The Problem With SPF Makeup (and How to Solve It)

New York Times

a day ago

To be clear, it isn't that SPF makeup is less effective than plain sunscreen at blocking the sun's harmful rays. Makeup products with SPF ​​can, in fact, contain the same active ingredients in the same (or very similar) proportions as several plain old sunscreens.
The issue is that no matter what SPF product you use, you have to apply 2 milligrams of it to every square centimeter of your skin to achieve the level of protection promised on the packaging, according to Michelle Wong, a chemist and science communicator at Lab Muffin Beauty Science and the author of the book The Science of Beauty . Usually I wear two pumps of liquid foundation. A quarter teaspoon — the generally recommended amount of sunscreen product that most faces need to be well protected from the sun's harmful rays — of SPF liquid foundation may be too much makeup for your liking. Connie Park/NYT Wirecutter, Rose Maura Lorre/NYT Wirecutter
That means that the amount of SPF makeup you would need to have adequate sun protection is the same as the amount of sunscreen you need. The big difference, of course, is that sunscreens are formulated to disappear into the skin, whereas makeup is designed to sit atop the skin and deliver more pigment the more you apply.
'You need about a quarter teaspoon of [SPF] product on your face for adequate coverage,' Wong said in a video interview. (Other sources gauge the amount at about the size of a nickel, which could be anywhere from a quarter teaspoon to a half teaspoon.) 'If you actually put that much foundation on, you will look like you have a massive, thick layer of makeup on your face.'
Wong demonstrated this in a video she shared on her popular Instagram channel, labmuffinbeautyscience. After measuring the surface area of her face, she determined that she would need 0.76 gram of SPF foundation to get the level of protection promised on the product's packaging. That 0.76 gram equaled 13 pumps of foundation — but in her normal makeup routine, she uses only about one and a half pumps.
When we conducted a similar test with a liquid foundation, we found that five pumps of the product were necessary to reach a quarter teaspoon. (If you already use SPF foundation and want to see if you're using enough for adequate sun protection, count the number of pumps it takes to fill a ¼ teaspoon measuring spoon and see how that amount looks and feels on your face.) For years, I've used a CC cream with SPF as my foundation, normally applying one or two pumps to my face. Here is what one pump looks like on my fingers (left) and then scraped into a ¼ teaspoon measuring spoon (right). The spoon is far from being even half full. Completely filling the measuring spoon took six pumps of the cream. Rose Maura Lorre/NYT Wirecutter
Other SPF makeup products, such as BB creams, CC creams, and powdered foundation, have the same problem. Although these tend to be more sheer than typical foundations, which may allow you to layer them on a bit thicker, 'I don't think I've ever seen one where you can actually get the full amount of protection and not look a bit ridiculous,' Wong said. (When we repeated the above test with a CC cream, we found that six pumps equaled a quarter teaspoon.)
As for powdered sunscreen, the company Colorescience, known for its Sunforgettable Total Protection Brush-On Shield SPF 50 powdered sunscreen, states in a blog post, 'Generally speaking, the SPF ingredients in makeup aren't strong enough to fully protect your skin from sun damage all on their own and should be applied in conjunction with a sunscreen product.'
If you layer SPF makeup over sunscreen, you will potentially get a more-is-more, cumulative boost of protection. Exactly how much of a boost would be especially difficult to calculate, Wong said, but it's likely to be quite small.
However, a 2021 study suggests that wearing SPF-free makeup could also increase (again, if ever so little) your overall sun protection. That's because 'all makeup … contains filters similar to those found in physical sunscreens,' as The New York Times previously reported.