what I did to get rid of greasy-looking makeup as an oily girlie
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As someone with very oily skin, sometimes I can’t help but ponder if I hate having skin as oily as mine and if I would have been better off with dry skin.
One of those moments used to always be when I had makeup on. After a couple of hours, my face would look like I dipped it in a bowl of oil unless I kept blotting and blotting and this was extremely exhausting for me.
There had to be a way to tame these floodgates of sebum in my skin so I searched for different remedies to see what others did and through trial and error, I was able to find a few things that made a huge difference in my skin and I am about to share them with you.
1. Your skincare is the foundation of how your skin would look with makeup
This may sound like common sense but I really want to reiterate this point because, if you have a faulty skincare routine, your skin will always look greasy when you wear makeup regardless of how you try applying the makeup’
Some of the skincare mistakes I made were:
1. Using too much acids in my skincare routine
I know one of the beautiful things that have happened in skincare in recent times is the access we have to pure skincare ingredients we didn’t have access to in the past.
Now you can get pure acids like glycolic acid, lactic acid, salicylic acid, etc and it’s very exciting using these in skincare because you can see very rapid results. It’s also very easy to overuse it in amounts that can throw your moisture barrier out of balance.
When your moisture barrier is disturbed, regardless of how many moisturizing products you apply, your skin feels dehydrated and extremely exfoliated so it just produces very large amounts of sebum to protect the skin.
2. Using too many skincare products before applying makeup
You need a simpler skincare routine before applying your makeup that would create a very simple base for your makeup.
Using too many skincare products can overwhelm your skin and clog your pores leading to your skin producing even more sebum. The products you apply itself can also make your makeup look greasy.
3. Exfoliating excessively
Exfoliation in skincare is a game-changer for the appearance of the skin. It gives you brighter skin, helps get rid of hyperpigmentation, and gives you glowing and youthful-looking skin.
Exfoliation is like a magic trick for people with dry skin. Their skin just absolutely loves it. However, for oily skin, it can be a bit of a two-edged sword. Exfoliation produces fantastic results but if not done right, it can hurt your moisture barrier without you even knowing and your makeup just looks extra greasy.
Overly exfoliating removes a lot of the outer layer of your skin and your skin produces even more sebum to protect the layer that is out.
I’m not talking about just chemical exfoliants. These also include physical exfoliants like scrubs.
2. You use excessively drying products
You have oily skin so you use more products like lots and lots of powders, matte foundation, and setting sprays that promise to be no different than glue but for your face.
These products dry out your skin and guess what your skin does when it is dry? You are right, it produces even more sebum than it should.
Also if you use excessively drying products, you are just training your skin to always produce more sebum at baseline which means your skin would generally be a lot greasier in general.
What should you do instead?
1. Take a step back from excessively exfoliating and use more hydrating products
The trick to curbing your skin’s excessive oil production is to first ease up on the excessive exfoliation and use a lot of hydrating and moisturizing products. What we want to do is to feed our skin with a lot of these products to tell it we don’t need it to produce as much sebum.
The kind of skincare you choose will determine the results you get. Korean skincare seems to be very efficient for this. Korean products are very moisture focused and they are usually very light.
I use a light toner and essence, then a light serum, sometimes I skip out on the serum, and then a light moisturizer and a light sunscreen in the daytime in that order. Some of my favorite products are:
- After washing my face, I go in with the Missha time revolution the first time essence.
- For added moisture, I can add the Laneige cream skin refiner toner or the Anua Heartleaf 77 Soothing Toner.
- sometimes I add a little bit of the Cosrx snail mucin.
- If I’m feeling like adding a serum I’ll use one here but not with active ingredients like acids, niacinamide, vitamin C, etc.
- Then I follow with my favourite moisturizer under makeup which is the purito deep water cream. This moisturizer is almost as light as water and goes deep in your skin hydrating it all day.
- In the daytime, I go in with the La Roch Posay shaka fluid sunscreen.
2. Don’t run away from skin care products that aren’t matte
Like I said before, using so many matte products is doing the opposite of what you think it is doing for you. You should try incorporating products with a skinlike finish. Not things with oils for example with products that are labeled illuminating, etc.
Use powers as light as possible to set your makeup but don’t use so much.
A lot of powder also makes your makeup cakey which on top of the greasy skin just doesn’t look great.
3. Use setting sprays that hold but aren’t excessively drying
I always recommend less powder and more setting spray.
You just need to find one with enough hold but that doesn’t dry out your skin. An important thing to look out for in this case is alcohol. A lot of setting sprays have them but that is something you don’t want in your products because of how drying and irritating alcohol usually is for the skin.
conclusion
I’m glad you made it to the end of this post. I hope you picked up a few tips from these ones I’ve shared from my experience of what has worked for me.
Finding things that work for you involves a lot of experimenting which is much more beneficial when you use products that are more suitable for your skin type.
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