IT Cosmetics CC+ Cream, reviewed for skin over 50

Four situations where it is clearly the correct choice, and they are specific.

Widespread pigmentation. Melasma, extensive sun damage, or hyperpigmentation across most of the cheeks. When the uneven area is most of your face, treating it spot by spot stops making sense.

Significant redness across a large area. The corrective pigment does work a plain foundation shade cannot, and in one layer rather than a corrector plus a base. See best foundation for rosacea.

You want one product doing three jobs. Base, corrector and sunscreen in one tube is a real simplification, and for anyone who finds a multi-step routine difficult, removing two containers is a genuine benefit.

You need coverage to survive a long day. It holds without the usual full-coverage penalty of a chalky dry-down.

And when it is the wrong product: if your tone is reasonably even with a few spots, if your skin is markedly crepey, or if you were buying it mainly for the SPF — in which case a dedicated sunscreen applied generously does the job better.

If you have decided this is the right product, five things reduce its main drawback.

Apply it thin and build only where you need it. Full coverage does not require a full-coverage layer everywhere — the center of the face, built over the worst areas, with almost nothing at the edges.

Press it on with a damp sponge, never buff it. Pressing deposits product on the surface; buffing drives a thick cream into every line it crosses.

Moisturize well and wait two minutes. A thick cream on under-hydrated skin is the combination most likely to look like a mask.

Set almost nothing. The instinct with a heavy base is to powder it, and powder plus a thick cream is two layers in a crease. Blot the nose and leave the rest.

Check it at 3pm rather than at 9am. This is the product most likely to look different later, and knowing how it behaves on your face by mid-afternoon tells you whether it suits you — not how it looks on application.

And if the tube has become hard to squeeze, stand it on its cap so the product collects at the opening, and roll it from the bottom. See pump versus tube versus jar.

This review is based on the manufacturer's and retailers' published descriptions of the formula, coverage and SPF, the packaging as sold, and reported experience of the product on mature skin from established beauty and consumer press.

We have not lab-tested the formula, verified the SPF, measured wear time, assessed flashback under flash, or run a tester panel. Where this page says a thick cream is the formula most likely to settle on crepey skin, that is a mechanical consequence of material volume on a folding surface rather than a measurement.

The note about mineral filters reading ashy on deep skin and bouncing camera flash is a property of white mineral particles rather than a specific finding about this product, and it is included because it is the kind of thing worth knowing before an event rather than after.

We have no relationship with the brand and were not given product. The product's position in our foundation roundups was decided before this page was written.