Related

Format	Pigment load	Best for
Liquid, doe-foot wand	Medium	Under-eye; the default
Liquid, high-coverage	High	Blemishes, discoloration
Cream, pot or stick	High	Blemishes, scars, tattoo cover
Compact / heavy cream	Very high	Birthmarks, vitiligo, tattoos — see Tattoo Cover-Up Makeup
Powder	Medium	Setting rather than covering

The most useful thing to understand about concealer is that under-eye and blemish work want opposite properties.

Under the eye the skin is thin, mobile and creased by every blink. The failure mode is creasing — product collecting in fine lines within an hour. What helps: a lighter, more flexible, less heavily pigmented formula; a small quantity; setting with a fine Setting Powder; and placing it in a triangle under the shadow rather than smearing it along the lash line. A concealer one shade lighter than the skin brightens the recess; more than one shade lighter reads grey in photographs.

On a blemish the skin is static but the surface is raised and often flaking. The failure mode is texture — a matte, thick product sitting on a bump makes it more obvious, not less. What helps: a thin, high-pigment, quick-setting product applied with a small brush only to the discoloured area, patted rather than blended outward, and set lightly. Colour-correct first if the redness is strong: a green or yellow-toned base under a skin-tone concealer beats piling on more of the latter.

The complementary-colour logic: green neutralises red; peach or orange neutralises blue-grey, which is why peach correctors work under the eyes on deeper skin tones and on beard shadow; lavender neutralises yellow. Applied thinly under the concealer, not instead of it. See Colour Corrector.

Cosmetic in the US — FDA primary category (08), makeup preparations (not eye) — except that a concealer used in the eye area falls under (03) eye makeup preparations, and the eye-area rules then bite:

• Only colour additives approved for eye-area use may be present. Some pigments permitted in a lip or face product are not permitted near the eye.
• Under MoCRA the small-business exemption from registration and listing does not apply to products that regularly contact the mucous membrane of the eye.

Since most concealers are marketed for under-eye use, the stricter set generally governs. Certified colour additives must come from FDA-certified batches.

Twelve months after opening for a wand or tube. Doe-foot applicators go back into the tube after touching the skin, which is the contamination route, and using one on an active blemish and returning it to the tube seeds the whole product. Use a brush for blemishes, or decant.

Anything used on the eye area follows the strict rule: stop at the first sign of eye irritation or infection and discard. Pots and compacts contaminate faster than tubes.

• Makeup — the shelf this sits on, and the rest of it.
• Cosmetics — what the label is legally allowed to say, and the full catalogue.
• The rest of Face — Face Primer · Foundation · BB Cream · CC Cream · Tinted Moisturiser · Colour Corrector · Face Powder · Setting Powder · Setting Spray.
• Regulatory statements here follow the FDA and EU sources listed on Cosmetics, read 16 August 2026.