Review: [innisfree] No-Sebum Mineral Powder and Blur Primer

Sunday, November 27, 2016

For the great part of the last year, I actually considered the oil production on my face to be at an all time low. I rarely found myself blotting ( it took me over a year and a half to finish a packet of Tatcha blotting papers) or even bringing along pressed powder in my purse. However in the last few months there's been an ongoing out-of-control sebum party going in my tzone and I find myself needing more products to keep myself from looking greasy, because you can't call the cops on your androgens.

Enter Innisfree's No-Sebum line of products, which well, could a line be more aptly named? No beating around the bush with keywords like "Velvet" or "Mattifying", just No, Sebum. You are not wanted here.

What I'm am really looking for here are products that control oil but do not further dehydrate my skin, which is already oh so prone to moisture loss. I find that oily + moist looks better than oily + flaky.

First, here's what my bare skin looks like. There's some redness, blemishes and texture issues. Not to mention some larger pores on my nose.

No-Sebum Blur Primer

I used this primer two ways:

1. The first was to apply it as you normally would a primer, a thin layer over a prepped, moisturized face. I then wore concealer, foundation and powder on top, nothing new here. This (used with the No Sebum Powder) gave me 6 hours of completely shine free face, then an additional 4-8 hours of Satiny-Slightly-Glowy-But-Still-Acceptable face. If you follow me on Instagram, I posted a day's worth of updates in My Stories a few weeks ago.

Skin with a layer of the primer over it. The primer is slightly tinted and the silicones blur the skin's appearance quite a bit.

2. Mixed 1:1 with my foundation (Dolce & Gabbana Beauty The Perfect Luminous Foundation, reviewed here) to make a custom long wearing foundation with plenty of slip and easy application. This is superb because it takes virtually no time, but greatly extends the wear of my base makeup by three to six hours and the finish is so much more natural looking than foundation on its own. My skin just looks really nice as opposed to the tell tale signs of foundation slightly settled into pores and fine lines. It's not as long wearing as two separate layers of primer and foundation, in addition to less coverage, but I'm happy with the tradeoff.

Cheek with primer and foundation.

Now given that this primer has greatly extended wear time, it didn't come as a huge shock that it takes a little more effort than usual to remove this product. Just using a cleansing oil didn't cut it, it definitely required a followup cleanser to get all the remnants or else I'd have small blemishes the next day.

No-Sebum Mineral Powder

This powder very faintly smells like baby powder and herbs. It's supposed to contain mint, which I had overlooked when ordering and then became slightly concerned about upon receiving (a lot of mint tingly products make my skin red and and kind of throbbing) but it seems like the amount (if any) is tolerated by my face just fine.

Skin with primer layer, foundation, then Mineral Powder.

While you could swirl some of this powder around with a big face brush to set your makeup (which I do when I'm in a hurry), my preferred method of application is "baking" it into my tzone the way it has become popular to do for undereye concealing. The use here is not to brighten and conceal the tzone but to really set the powder in place after my foundation is applied. I don't really use the provided puff, my go-to is a damp beauty sponge followed up by a huge fluffy face brush.

The downside is that the powder does have a slight white cast, at least -NC5 or so. The cast lessens with every hour I have it on, so while 6am me is not super pleased with how it looks, by 9am it is not distinguishable.

I'm exceedingly pleased with how well these products perform; they certainly live up to the No Sebum name. The primer and powder keep my makeup from breaking down and I'm able to go hours without thinking about how my face may look very slick. The two products also do a great job of not dehydrating my skin and the overall my base makeup looks natural (other than the initial light cast).

The best part for me is that neither one of these products break the bank. The No-Sebum Powder is $6 from YesStyle (rounded up, even) and the Blur Primer is $13. You could even find them cheaper if you're willing to order from Korea (however, more costly shipping). I'm very interested in trying other products from the No-Sebum line, perhaps the compact powder for my purse

What are some of your favorite oil control products? Have you tried anything from the Innisfree No-Sebum line?

Products featured were purchased by me, for my own use. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy. Post contains affiliate links.