Can You Wear Primer Without Makeup?
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Of all the makeup products in the market, primers, in particular, are met with a ton of suspicion, with people often debating if you need them in your makeup bag or not. And it’s only right that we tell you what a primer is and how it’s different from your moisturizer with a list of wonders it can do for your skin if you find the right one suited to your skin type and skin concerns.
You can very much wear a face primer without makeup to give your skin a smoother appearance. As the primer promises to fill in pores and fine lines, it’ll blur out any imperfections you have and give the illusion of a smoother, flawless face. If you’re faced with very oily skin, you can also wear mattifying primers to control the oils all day long. Similarly, if you have dull, lifeless, and dry skin, you can opt for a moisturizing primer with a luminous finish on the skin to add some life back into the skin while keeping it nourished. A lot of color correcting primers can also be of great help if you’re looking to counter any redness, rosacea, tired-looking skin, or uneven skin. It will fix the discoloration in your skin, accounting for a more awake and fresh result.
What is a face primer?
As the name already suggests, primer is used to prep your skin for makeup. The sole purpose is to smooth out the skin, fill in your pores and fine lines, create a barrier between the skin and the foundation you put on top of it and come with added mattifying, luminous, and hydrating finishes to suit your skin type. Primers also help the foundation glide smoothly onto your skin and blur out any imperfections on the skin with their formula. Primers also claim to increase your foundation’s longevity as they help the foundation grip the skin better. There are dedicated primers that promise to make your foundation last a lot longer than it usually would.
How many types of primers are there, and what do they do?
Face primers come in a wide variety to help cater to different skin concerns; here are a few basic ones:
Mattifying Primers: Mattifying primers help control oils that can at some point interfere with your foundation and the rest of the makeup, causing them to separate, which makes you look blotchy. These primers often come with the added benefit of blurring out your pores. They are ideally placed at the points where you are the oiliest and find that your foundation wears off quickly from those areas.
Blurring Primers: These primers are great for maturing skin as they smooth out the face and provide a clean slate for makeup to cling to. These primers can quickly fill in any pores, fine lines, minor wrinkles, and scars, and they help the foundation glide on smoothly.
Hydrating Primers: If you find that your skin has been looking a little dull and dry, hydrating primers will do wonders for you as it will hydrate the skin and makeup for the lost moisture in the skin without making you look too greasy.
Oil Based Primers: If you have very dry skin, opting for an oil-based primer will do wonders for your dry skin as it will nourish your skin at the deepest level and erase signs of dryness, leaving you with replenished and dewy skin throughout the day!
Luminous Primers: If you own a matte foundation but want it to look more radiant and healthier on the skin, opt for a luminous primer. It will give you a subtle, radiant glow from within that looks even better with a sheer foundation on. These primers are ideal for normal. Combination skin types and oily skin types add the glow without promising too much moisture.
Gripping Primers: If you find that your foundation is sliding off throughout the day and doesn’t stick to the skin no matter how hard you try, it’s time to invest in a gripping primer. These primers often have a tacky finish that acts as a glue for your foundation and helps it cling to the skin throughout the day, increasing the wear time and performance. These primers are also great if you’re going out to an event where you know you’ll be sweating a lot.
Color Correcting Primers: Color correcting primers are magic – they conceal specific skin concerns without the need of a color correcting concealer, like redness or sallowness and fatigue in the skin, before you even reach for the foundation. And while they come in almost all colors of the rainbow, each color targets a specific area of concern. Green helps reduce the appearance of rosacea or redness on the skin.
If your face has too much yellow compared to your body’s neck and rest, a purple corrector will help brighten and mellow down the yellow tones in your skin, balancing out the tone. An orange or a peach primer will help remove any discoloration around the mouth and nose, temples, and eyes if you have minimal dark circles. A pink corrector, regardless of your skin tone, will help brighten up your complexion. Some primers come in as a combination of more than one correcting color and serve as an all-rounder primer in most cases.
Other Types of Primer
Lip Primer
What is a lip primer?
Following suit of prepping your skin right, you can’t ignore your lips, and there have been a variety of lip primers readily available in the market now. Lip primers claim to smooth out the texture on your dry lips and nourish them while making your lip products last way longer and requiring fewer touch-ups throughout the day. They also prevent your lipstick from feathering out and smudging and add dimension to the shade of your existing lip color by making it appear more vibrant.
Can I wear a lip primer without makeup?
You can if you want, but we think a lip balm would do the job as well. Since you won’t be wearing any lip products on top of the primer, your main goal is to keep the lips hydrated, lip balm or petroleum jelly will do just that. But if you have a ton of texture on your lips that you’d like to smooth out, you can go in with a lip primer.
Eye Primer
What is an eye primer?
Apart from face primers, we also have eye primers available in the market, which help the eye shadows blend better and stop them from creasing. Eye primers also make the pigments in your eye shadow appear more vivid and accurate to color as in the pan. Just like face primers, eye primers also come in various finishes. Some completely clear, come with a soft luminous finish for dry eyelids, some with a matte finish for oily eyelids. These can smudge the shadows, and most of them are tinted and have a lot of coverage to help diminish the appearance of any discoloration or prominent veins on the eyelids.
Can I wear an eye primer without makeup?
While we don’t think it’s necessary to wear an eye primer without any eye makeup, it can help mattify your oily eyelids. The tint will also help to even out the eyelids, concealing all imperfections. You can also opt for a luminous finish eye primer to hydrate your eyelids without looking greasy or oily. Luminous finish eye primers also add a particular dimension to your eyelids, just like a shimmery eye shadow would do, and it looks beautiful!
Lash Primer
What is Eyelash Primer?
The beauty industry has taken it upon itself to make a primer for literally everything you apply to your face. It does make a visibly clear difference in the results, especially when it comes to lash primers. Lash primers are supposed to nourish, strengthen and give a boost to your lashes before you go in with mascara. It serves as the base coat for your lashes, which creates a flawless and smooth base by filling in the cracks in the lashes and creating a smooth canvas for the mascara.
Can I wear a lash primer without makeup?
You absolutely can, but the problem is that most lash primers are white, which will leave you looking weird with white lashes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t wear a lash primer at all; there are a few lash primers that come in a dark brown shade, which you can easily carry off!
Can I wear a combination of primers on my skin?
Yes, you can, it’s the most efficient way to get the best out of your primers and helps the rest of your makeup last a lot longer. There are several ways you can combine your primers on the face to get the desired result. Most people find their T-zone getting oily as the day passes while the rest of their face feels tight and dry; going in with an oil-controlling/mattifying primer on the T-zone and a hydrating primer on the rest of the face will balance out the skin.
Similarly, you can go in with different primers on the other areas of your face; some areas might need a bit of blurring out, some might need that extra dose of moisture, some might need a bit of color correcting, while some regions may call for luminosity and help with the foundation sliding off, the possibilities are endless when it comes to using primers to address different skin concerns.
Should I wear primer after SPF or before SPF?
Ideally, you would want a primer that has a bit of SPF in it to provide that extra layer of protection, but it’s not necessary if you always wear sunscreen under your makeup. Sunscreen should be the last step of your skincare routine, and you should give it a little time to sink into the skin before going in with makeup prep. So, SPF comes; first, you let it slip in and then go in with a makeup primer or a combination of different primers.
What's the best way to apply a primer?
When it comes to your primer, there’s no hard and fast rule to apply it. Your primer can be used in many ways, depending on the formula and the concerns it addresses. The easiest way to go in with your primer is with your fingers; it is a great way to apply and smoothing out your skin; instead of rubbing it into your skin, you want to press it onto your problem areas with your fingers to see the best results. The heat from your fingers warms up the product and helps to spread it quickly.
You can also go in with a stippling brush to lightly distribute the primer onto your skin; this is ideal for thin, lotion-based hydrating primers. Using a stippling brush also helps the primer penetrate the skin.
If you’re a makeup artist or a germophobic, using disposable triangle shape sponges also helps to distribute the product efficiently onto the skin. Use them and dispose of them; it’s just that simple!
You can also press in your makeup primer with your beauty blender or similar sponges that you have, which expand in size when damp. The dampness of these sponges packs an extra dose of hydration and helps press the primer well into your skin.
Will I need to set my primer?
We’ve been trained to set everything that goes onto our face, from foundation to brows, to concealer; there’s no getting away without setting these products. When you’re wearing a primer on its own without any makeup, it’s a different story.
If you’re using a mattifying primer, you don’t need to set it with a translucent powder. Still, when you’re using an oil-based or a moisturizing primer, there may be areas that you want to look matte. The space between the eyebrows and around the nose is where people like to be a little matte and hence set the primer with a bit of dusting of translucent powder to prevent them from looking too greasy. People who find the need to touch up any excess oils or shine that they’ve collected throughout the day can also apply a little translucent powder for a fresh-looking complexion that’s not overly greasy or overly matte. The key is to find what products you’re using and how your skin is responding to them.
Primer for different skin types
What primer should I wear if I have dry skin?
If you have very dry skin, opt for a dewy, oil-based, and hydrating primer. An oil-based primer will lock in all the hydration and keep your skin looking plump and healthy throughout the day. It will also prevent your foundation and other base products from clinging onto any dry patches that you might have.
If you have normal to dry skin, going in with a combination of primers can do the trick for you. Go in with an oil-based primer to the dry patches and a hydrating primer on the rest of your face for skin balance.
What primer should I wear if I have oily skin?
When you have oily skin, it’s a given that you’d want to go in with a primer that controls excess oils and keeps your matte throughout the day.
But sometimes, you want a luminous finish to the skin without looking too oily. To achieve that look, you can opt for a mattifying combination and a luminous primer to prep the skin and go on top with your matte foundation to get a subtle hint of glow from within. You can also go in with a dewy finish foundation and a mattifying and oil-controlling primer to prevent adding extra luminosity from your natural oils; after doing so, set with a matte powder in places where you get oily and dust a light layer of translucent powder on the rest of your face.
What primer should I wear if I have combination skin?
When you have combination skin, it only makes sense to go in with a combination of different primers to combat the oils and the dryness at the same time. Pair a mattifying primer with a hydrating one to get the best of both worlds, add a luminous primer for a radiant finish or keep it mate!
Conclusion:
You can wear a primer on its own without makeup and still have all your skin smoother, brighter, with an even complexion!
Iqra
As the head artist of Farishta Beauty I was inspired by many young individuals who were just like me passionate about makeup.
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