Raise your hand if you were blessed with perfect skin! No hands? Yeah, I thought so. Even those among us who have “pretty good skin” tend to have some things that they’d like to refine and polish. I, like so many other women of color, deal with a bit of hyperpigmentation. Hyperpigmentation occurs when too much melanin, the very essence of #BlackGirlMagic, gathers in the skin. Hyperpigmentation occurs for any number of reasons– hormonal changes, heredity, acne, sun exposure– lots of things. When you have to hide hyperpigmentation, here are the steps you should take.

1. Skincare– Don’t you DARE skip the sunscreen!

The best way to combat hyperpigmentation is prevention, no doubt about that. Your skin is your largest organ and is regenerating all of the time. That, my friends, is good news. With careful– aka not aggressive– exfoliation, you can slough your way to new, fresh baby skin. All that fresh skin only stays that way if you protect it, though. Melanin, the pigment that caused those dark spots in the first place, is activated by sun exposure. So if you’re trying to hide hyperpigmentation and banish it for good, you best be dodging those UVA and UVB rays and slathering on the sunscreen.

2. Spot Treatment

You’re impatient, I get it. You want to hide that hyperpigmentation and you want to hide it NOW. But yes, you could go straight to the dermatologist and have them annihilate your face with a laser or you could exercise a bit of patience and try some topical solutions. When you’re looking to fix those dark spots, look for the “lightening” and “brightening” and occasionally, especially when you’re diving into the world of Korean beauty, “whitening”. I know, I know. Though those words can feel straight disrespectful to the beauty of your melanated skin, these are the keywords that will lead you to the products that will treat your hyperpigmentation issue.

3. Color Correction

While you may be taking care of your skin, practically rolling in serums and spot treatments and slathering yourself thoroughly in sunscreen, you might still desire an immediate solution to your hyperpigmentation problem. That solution? Color correction.

Color correction can be used to combat a variety of skin woes but when it comes to dark spots, think peach.  The deeper your skin, the deeper your peach corrector should be– on my tone, a nice orange (seriously, it’s ORANGE) corrector will do the trick.

There’s basically no better way to explain this magic, so I’ll show you instead!

 

Dark under-eye circles are my thing. I was born looking wan and tired.

I use the corrector under my eyes, primarily, and spot treat other areas. Notice how the orange corrector balances with my skin tone? This is the goal.

No one will catch me out here with crusty lips!

Makeup done. Skin even. Hyperpigmentation conquered.