How to Cover Acne Scars with Makeup

By Tianna

Acne scarring can make you feel self-conscious about yourself. Even though makeup won’t make the underlying acne scarring any better, sometimes we just need a boost to our confidence and if temporarily covering acne scars with make up helps, then why not?  

If you have acne scars, its okay not to cover them either and in fact we encourage it! But if you don't feel comfortable showing your acne scars or want to cover your acne scars or hyperpigmentation for any reason - here's a guide on how to apply makeup to cover acne scars. 

Being a woman of color, my acne scars are a dark brown color and sometimes they show themselves through my foundation so I use a corrective concealer to hide it. It's easy to know how to cover acne scars once you know the basics about concealers.

You can cover acne scars with these steps

1. Primer.  A primer gives a smooth canvas for your concealer to go over. Primers can also help smooth the appearance of textured acne scars by filling them in. 
   
   
2. Color correcting concealer.  Refer to a color wheel and use the opposite color of your acne scar. For example, Green is good for redness, and yellow is good for the purple darker hyperpigmentation. 
   
   
3. Blend your foundation or your usual skin toned concealer over the color correcting one.

 WHAT IS A CORRECTIVE CONCEALER?

Corrective concealers are completely different from regular concealers. A normal concealer will be a shade lighter than your skin or a shade or two darker than your skin tone if it is being used to contour/highlight your face or to just conceal marks on the face.

Corrective concealers come in the colors green, orange/peach, white, yellow, pink and purple. The different colors help with a plethora of skin imperfections and simply to cover acne and acne scars. 

When picking concealers, an understanding of color theory will be helpful. 
 

Green Concealer - This conceals redness, most commonly used on people of light skin tones. Green concealer sounds kind of crazy, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Remember learning about complementary colors in grade school? Well, red’s complementary color is green…meaning that when you cover your red problem areas with the green concealer the red is neutralized and toned down.

Yellow Concealer - Helps conceal under-eye circles and dark spots. Can be mixed with orange concealer to make peach or pink color.

Pink Concealers - Makes skin last dull and gives it more of a lively look.

Orange/Peach Concealers - Conceals dark spots such as acne scars. It cancels out the appearance of any type of scarring.

Purple Concealer - neutralizes yellow colors

White Concealer - Highlights and shimmers
 

Apply Concealers with a sponge or a beauty blender and blend it out, then proceed to apply your foundation. Some corrective concealers like the orange concealer or yellow concealer can set off the actual color of your foundation so make sure to BLEND, BLEND, BLEND and apply enough foundation to make sure your concealer does not give off an orange or yellow hue.

BEST CORRECTIVE CONCEALERS BY BRAND:

1. A. Girl Pro. Conceal High Definition concealer ( these come in tubes and not a palette) (Price range-$2-5 for each tube at BSS, and online)
   
   
2. NYX Color Correcting Concealer palette (Price Range- $5-9 at Ulta, Target or online)
   
   
3. Makeup Forever concealer palette (Price: $40 at Sephora)
4. ELF corrective Concealer palette (Price Range: $3-6 ELF store, target and online)
   
   
5. Maybelline Corrective concealer sticks (Price Range: $4-9 at Ulta, Walmart, Target, or any drug stores) 

Just follow these beauty tips and to know how to use makeup to cover acne and acne scars and you'll be good to go!

For my acne prone friends,  make sure to double cleanse or triple cleanse to fully remove your makeup to prevent clogged pores and new acne forming. 

There is a long-term solution to not just cover but fade those scars. Microneedling is a long term solution to fade those scars. There are  products that can help with acne scarring.

The Banisher is an at home microneedling tool that creates micro-wounds to trigger skin’s natural repair system, heal and rebuild new collagen and elastin fibers which is the foundation of the skin. This new layer of skin forming will push out damaged skin, and result scarring to fill in.