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Making Dark Colours Matte
I’ve been using bases as of recent but I’d like to start formulating myself.
Currently the bases I use to mattify my pigments make them paler in colour.
I was wondering if there were mattifying agents that wouldn’t have this effect.
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3 Replies
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Spherical or fumed silica might, if you kept them saturated with oil - but the usual solution for this is to just increase the pigment levels. Do you have a situation that would keep you from doing that?
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Thank you @Bobzchemist
Nothing preventing me, I appreciate this! -
The problem you’re running into involves physics and light-scattering.
Generally speaking, lipsticks are formulated to leave a smooth, shiny, reflective film on skin. Looks a little like this:
========To move over to a matte appearance without changing any of the other characteristics of the lipstick, you need to add a powdered mattifying agent that is just large enough to break up the smoothness of the film, but not large enough, or jagged edged enough, to make the lipstick feel rough and/or draggy. Typically, you’re going to need a spherical powder for this.
Done right, you’ll get a film that looks more like this:=0=0=0=0=0=
(If the particles are too small, you’ll get a film that looks more like this:=o=o=o=o=o=o, which won’t be broken up enough to look matte)Spherical powders that size, unless they’re deliberately colored, are going to refract light and look white and opaque. There’s no way around this, really. You just need to overwhelm the whiteness with more pigment.
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