A Detailed Account On What Are BB Creams?

Image Credits: Loreal Paris

What Is All The Buzz Behind Beauty Balms?

Are you looking to save counter space as well as money while streamlining the beauty routine? None doesn’t want to. Becoming one of the hottest trends in the beauty industry is a new type of product called BB cream. 

Promising to do the job of five or six other jars and tubes including moisturiser, primer, sunscreen, skin treatment, concealer, and the foundation is this versatile skincare/makeup hybrid. 

Ni'Kita Wilson, a cosmetic chemist at Englewood Lab in New Jersey says it is the only product with the idea of a well-formulated BB cream, that you will need after you wash your face. 

How BB Creams Began?

Short for beauty balms or blemish balms is the BB cream. A dermatologist in Germany wanted a single cream that would protect skin and provide coverage after laser treatments which were the first BB cream developed. 

Eventually, it became a sensation in South Korea as well as then spreading throughout Asia was this all-in-one formulation. 

Furthermore Jessica Wu, MD, a Santa Monica, Calif., dermatologist and author of Feed Your Face: Younger, Smoother Skin and a Beautiful Body in 28 Delicious Days thought that going through seven different steps taking care of her skin is the average woman in Asia. She further notes that in Hong Kong every woman was using a BB cream to shorten that regimen. 

The BB Boom

Started hitting US store shelves in the spring of 2011 were the BB creams. From drugstore brands that cost under $10 to high-end department-store lines that may be as costly as $100 or more, as well as those lines only sold at spas or in doctor’s offices, today almost every major beauty company has a BB cream. On the way are more of them. 

It was found that although only 2% of beauty shoppers have purchased a BB cream then nearly 4 in 5 of those who have said they will buy the product again as observed by a market research group called NPD Group. 

What BB Creams Do?

Is it possible that one beauty product does it all? The answer is maybe. 

Offering effective sun protection with broad-spectrum SPF 30 or higher, are many BB creams following the recommendation for daily use by the American Academy of Dermatology. Wu says that further containing zinc oxide or titanium oxide as physical sunblocks that have some built-in water-resistant properties come to the BB creams. 

You can find BB creams that contain the following when it comes to skin treatment. 

Peptides and antioxidants in anti-aging components like vitamins A, E, and C.

Hyaluronic and glycerine like moisturising workhorses.

Helping even out skin tone using ingredients such as licorice and arbutin.

To give skin a luminous finish, the light reflecting mica

Helping smooth the skin acting much like a foundation primer does with silicone-based ingredients such as dimethicone.  

The Limitations of BB Creams

If you expect a BB cream to be a miracle in a tube for all its benefits you might be disappointed. As Wilson says, as they are master of none, it is likely to say that BB creams are like any jack-of-all-trades. As they are not as effective at moisturising, they do SPF very well and they can often prove to be good colour coverage. Loading all that functionality into a single product and ending up with a light texture is very difficult. BB creams tend to be a bit thicker than their tinted moisturisers as women find it to be. 

It can also be a challenge to find a BB cream that matches the colour of the skin perfectly. Usually, three to five fair to medium-dark hues, or in a single shade that blends with all skin tones, BB creams tend to come in a small range of shades. 

Finding these shades too light are some women. As Wilson thereby quips, in a BB cream, the darkest shades are like the medium shades in most of the foundation lines. 

You won’t find a BB cream or for that matter a tinted sunscreen with acne-fighting ingredients which comes as another limitation. Here it is important to note Wilson saying to be combined in a single product, FDA regulations don’t allow acne ingredients and SPF. You can expect to get the same results by replacing that with a BB cream if you have skincare issues that you are addressing with a targeted treatment product. 

Wilson says people with normal to oily skin and light to medium skin tone are the best candidates for BB creams who don’t need heavy moisturisers or anti-acne products. 

BB Creams and Your Beauty Regimen

BB creams can help those products work more effectively if they won’t replace every product in your skincare regimen. 

Using one herself under her lightweight foundation to help conceal acne scars, Wu says she loves BB creams. 

As she further says, is devoted to her foundations most of the women like her wouldn’t think of giving up the foundation which works perfectly for their skin. Without having to move up to a heavier foundation that feels like a mask, a BB cream can help you achieve fuller coverage. 

A pea-sized dab of BB cream can provide just the right amount of coverage for a casual day by itself. As aesthetician Veronica Barton-Schwartz owner of a Malibu, Cali., skincare studio who therefore counts locals Olivia Newton-John, Suzanne Somers, and Cher among her clients, says that they are all in a hurry as BB creams are fantastic time-savers. Getting better and better are formulations. 

That BB cream might indeed be all you need to tote for your skincare and beauty needs if you are after a low-key look. For people who are very natural and don’t like the idea of wearing makeup whereas wants to protect the skin covering up some imperfections, Wu says its also a good solution. 

Signing Off With A Few More Points 

While it also caters to his skin men buy BB creams made specifically for them. What’s next after these do-it-all BB creams. Here come the CC creams. Said to have a lighter texture, more coverage, and better hydration than their BB brethren are these colour-control creams.