With that in mind, scroll ahead to discover the best tinted moisturizers for mature skin — and which might be right for you.
Best Overall: Saie Slip Tint Dewy Tinted Moisturizer SPF 35 Sunscreen
This Allure Best of Beauty Award winner checks all the boxes: The “clean” formula offers a mineral-based SPF of 35, hydrates skin with hyaluronic acid, and pairs sheer coverage with impressive staying power. It works especially hard on the skin-care front, thanks to a lineup of active ingredients like pansy flower and licorice root extract, which help hydrate and brighten skin. Available in 14 shades, the formula itself is also noteworthy, especially if you’re in the market for something lightweight. Rather than sitting on top of skin or settling into wrinkles, it melts into your own complexion to look like your own skin — just a bit perkier.
Best for Dry Skin: Westman Atelier Vital Skincare Dewy Foundation Drops
If the average tinted moisturizer doesn’t offer quite enough moisture for you, good news: This formula just might. These Dewy Foundation Drops lean more towards a tinted face oil, thanks to ingredients like squalane, tsubaki oil, and ginseng, which give skin a radiant, soft, and thoroughly hydrated finish. That said, it doesn’t leave skin looking overly shiny and the pigments meld with skin in a way that looks natural. It also comes in 20 diverse shades. However, to get the best results and avoid patchiness, you have to shake the bottle before you dispense it to distribute the ingredients evenly.
Best for Dullness: Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturizer Light Revealer Natural Skin Illuminator
Makeup artist Laura Mercier practically created the tinted moisturizer category, so it’s little surprise her namesake brand made our list. This particular iteration, which is infused with luminescent pearls and comes in 14 shades, diffuses light in a way that gives skin a lit-from-within look and blurs fine lines — all while providing hydration, antioxidants, and sheer, soft-focus coverage. However, it only offers SPF 25, meaning a separate sunscreen is in order.
P.S. If you want to go slightly easier on the glow, Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturizer Natural Skin Perfector is perfect for you.
Best Luxury: Sisley-Paris Phyto-Hydra Teint Tinted Moisturizer
While this is definitely an investment pick, the lightweight formula brings a lot to the table for mature skin types. It emphasizes the skin-care aspect of tinted moisturizer with a blend of botanical ingredients like grapefruit and kiwi selected to brighten skin, even tone, and hydrate. (Translation: You’ll get long-term results in addition to on-the-spot benefits.) It also has medium coverage that doesn’t shift or oxidize throughout the day. The only drawback is that the four shade offerings are very limited; while that’s not always a dealbreaker for tinted moisturizer (which tends to be sheerer and therefore more forgiving than foundation), it can make finding the right skin tone match tricky.
Best Drugstore: Neutrogena Healthy Skin Perfector
This easy-to-blend formula gets a lot of things right: It includes retinol for under-the-radar firming and brightening benefits and imparts a radiant finish to skin — all while delivering enough coverage to conceal redness and fine lines. Since it uses chemical sunscreen filters, there’s no chalky finish to worry about, and antioxidants beef up protection against environmental aggressors. The only downside is that the sun protection, while broad-spectrum and a nice touch, is lower than the SPF 30 recommended by the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD), so you’ll need to layer it over a separate sunscreen with SPF 30 or higher to get adequate protection. Also, it’s only available in six shades.
Best for Dark Spots: Nars Pure Radiant Tinted Moisturizer Broad Spectrum SPF 30
To make quick work of dark spots — which often fade on their own, but can take months to do so — a two-part approach is key, meaning you need repair and prevention. Therein is the magic of this tinted moisturizer, which offers both. Vitamin C not only serves as an antioxidant but also interferes with the pigment-production process, through which it can even out skin tone. Meanwhile, the mineral-based SPF 30 prevents UV light from undoing all of that hard work. While those ingredients help fade dark spots over time, the buildable coverage (in 16 shades) works to hide them on the spot — giving you the best of both worlds.