The Only Primers Worth Knowing For Every Skin Type

Excess oil begins to form in the skin when the sebaceous glands overproduce sebum, an essential compound which helps hydrate and protect the skin. Unfortunately, when there is too much sebum, the skin appears oily, slippery and shiny.

To counteract the shininess of the excess sebum you’re prone to (especially in the T zone), we rely on mattifying ingredients such as silicon and avoid products with oil.

If you’re frustrated by your makeup slipping off your face by 12pm, a great primer is most certainly about to change your life.

Pore Professional by Benefit Cosmetics has earned its cult status by existing as one of the best performing mattifying primers on the market. Reducing the visible size of pores, blurring imperfections and turning an oily canvas into a velvety dream, if you haven’t tried this formular, we recommend giving it a go.

Below are the best mattifying primers on the market for those experiencing excess oil and looking to avoid congestion, without compromising on the longevity of their makeup.

Benefit Cosmetics The POREfessional Face Primer,$56, Sephora

Feeling neither oily nor dry? Fantastic!

Balanced skin suggests that you’re treating your concerns correctly and that your skin is happy and healthy. Big ups to you!

Working with a balanced canvas means that achieving your desired finish is so much more likely to nail.

Essentially your primer choice needs to really be according to how you want your skin’s finish to look. Matte, dewy, glowy, glassy, all of these can be achieved by the use of the right pre-makeup primer.

A recent beauty phenomenon you mightn’t be familiar with is the glass skin trend. Popularised out of the Korean beauty scene, glass skin is a continuation of the glowy, super-radiant skin finish. Trying to resemble the perfection and luminosity associated with the surface of glass, this very difficult canvas is more easily achieved with the help of a hardworking primer.

The Makeup Revolution Glass Skin Primer is a dewy gel that boosts hydration to leave skin radiant and perfectly glowy. If glass if what you seek, this primer is the perfect foundation product.

The Ordinary High Adherence Silicone Primer, £3.90, Cult Beauty

For those susceptible to inflammatory skin conditions such as rosacea, broken capillaries and overall redness of the skin, sometimes concealing doesn’t quite cut it.

Instead of relying only on the final stages of the makeup application process where concealer is applied, colour correction is usually more successful when introduced earlier in the mix.

The addition of green hues within a primer rebalances the colour of haemoglobin coming through the skin’s surface and equips the skin with the chance to start with an even-toned canvas.

Whilst the application of a green toned product to areas of redness may alert alarm bells, the buffing of the product into the skin seriously blurs any red or greenness, quite magically.

Unfortunately, skin experiencing these vascular concerns can also be sensitive in other departments. This is while you’ll find calming ingredients such as niacinamide, and Vitamin E to help soothe the skin to reduce more redness from occurring.

Reliant on a dual action soothing and correcting system, these primers should be the first port of call for those trying to reduce signs of redness with their makeup.

Napoleon Perdis Auto Pilot Calming Primer, $45, Adore Beauty