Is Your Makeup Pilling?
Have you ever finished your skincare routine and then start applying foundation and it balls up on your skin?
This is so annoying!
It usually comes down to ingredients. Silicones, particularly Dimethicone, are fillers that can cause products to pill. They are even found in 'clean' skincare because they are not necessarily toxic. This is in part because silicone molecules are inert and are too large to be absorbed into the skin.
The upside to silicones is that they help fill in pores and create a smooth canvas. They are typically found in moisturizers, primers, foundation, and sunscreen.
Check your ingredients
You may not recognize the ingredient because it won't necessarily say silicone. You’ll know there’s a potential pill-causer in your product if you see ingredients ending in -icone, -conol, or -xane.
Other ingredients that may cause pilling are talc, iron oxide, mica, and fluorphlogopite but silicones are the main culprits.
Silicone foundations usually have Dimethicone and Cyclomethicone listed on the ingredient list.
Here are a few examples:
- Lancome Teint Idole Ultra Wear Foundation
- Estee Lauder Double Wear Stay-in-Place Foundation
- NARS Sheer Glow Foundation
- DIOR Forever Undercover Foundation
Secondly, watch the amount and layers of products applied to your skin, as ingredients can mess with product layering.
Uneven or rough skin
Another reason products can pill is because of uneven or rough skin, which can decrease the ability for your products to absorb into the skin effectively.
We’ve gone over exfoliation several times in our Telluride Glow newsletters, and the most important reason why we gently exfoliate is to slough off dead skin cells.
If we don’t regularly exfoliate, skin care products aren’t able to penetrate the skin. This can lead to the products sitting on top of the skin, and therefore cause pilling when you try to apply anything over them.
If you are using silicone products, they are also harder to wash off. Silicones are hydrophobic-they repel water. So a deep clean once a week is critical to purified, glowing skin.
Telluride Glow's Snow Rose Recovery Mask not only purifies with New Zealand glacial clay, white willow bark and aspen bark, it also gently exfoliates with rose petal powder. I fear that many skip the exfoliation step and just wash it off, but to get the most out of the mask it is beneficial to exfoliate off with wet hands for about 30 seconds before rinsing. You only leave the mask on for 10 minutes so there is no excuse to skip masking!