Ever feel like you look like this Orange faced Barbie? LoL! We've seen the complaints all over the internet: "My makeup looks fine when I put it on. Then over the course of the day it turns orange! Why? "
Well we thought we'd take a few minutes to explain this phenomena. There are numerous contributing factors, and it's not necessarily your fault!
Orange face morphing most commonly effects those with normal to oily skin tones. The ingredients in the makeup look great when you put it on, then as your skin oil is produced throughout the day, the oils mix with the ingredients in your makeup. Sometimes this is a bad thing for you, and those looking at you!
Makeup ingredients are the perpetrator of this crime against your face! With almost infinite ingredients available to formulators, you'd think they would get it right. Untreated pigments or base ingredients account for the morphing. Take mica for instance. Mica is one of the most common base ingredients for loose mineral makeup. For formulators, it's known as Sericite Mica. It's a white, super soft and finely milled powder and a great substitute for talc. It's commonly used as a base to disperse the other ingredients and pigments into, since you can't just smear pigment around on your face and look like anything other than Rainbow Bright.
However, there are a plethora of Mica choices. There's the basic untreated/plain Sericite Mica, then there are treated Micas. Treated Micas are coated with another ingredients, like jojoba, magnesium myristate, silica, etc... This not only makes the mica feel better on the skin, but it gives it stability. The stability to maintain its pigment/shade even when your skin starts to get oily. You won't suffer from Orange Face Morphing if the formulator has gone to the expense of using treated base ingredients.
Unfortunately, the customer has no way of determining by the label, if the company has used treated or untreated ingredients. Why? Because the FDA does not require that disclosure, and they require the ingredients be listed in order of predominance.
Take our Valley Girl mineral foundation for example. Our base mica is jojoba treated sericite. Mica is the main ingredient. Jojoba, being a coating is less than 1% of the formula, so it gets placed towards the end of the list. So reading the ingredient list for our Valley Girl mineral foundation, there is really no way to tell that we use the more costly, treated sericite mica as our base:
Mica, Zinc Oxide, Boron Nitride, Silica Microspheres, Titanium Dioxide, Kaolin Clay, Magnesium Stearate, Silk Powder, Allantoin, Iron Oxides (colorant), UltraMarines (colorant), Jojoba, and Dimethicone.
So what's a girl to do?
- Give the products you use a test run! Buy a makeup sample, or have your makeup done and wear it for the day. Pay close attention to how it looks at the end of the day compared to how it looked when it was applied.
- Ask the company if they use treated/coated, premium base ingredients. If they don't tell you they do, then I'd guess that means "No" they don't!
