What changes, decade by decade

Age bands are a crude way to organize makeup advice and they are also how people actually search, so this section takes them seriously while being honest that a 55-year-old face and a 70-year-old face can look nothing like the stereotype of either. Sun exposure, genetics, smoking, hormones and climate do more than the number does. Read the decade that describes your skin rather than the one on your passport.

That said, there is a real sequence to what changes, and knowing the sequence is useful. In your forties, the first permanent expression lines set and skin starts holding less water, so the complaint is usually that foundation looks fine in the morning and not at 4pm. In your fifties, texture becomes the dominant concern — pores slacken, the surface becomes less even, and dewy finishes that always worked start reading as busy. In your sixties, dryness usually overtakes texture: skin makes markedly less oil, the lipid barrier thins, and the complaint becomes flatness rather than shine.

In your seventies, two new factors tend to arrive. Skin on the eyelid and under the eye becomes genuinely thin and mobile, so the under-eye stops tolerating product the way it did. And for many people, physical handling starts to matter — joints, grip strength, close vision — which changes which products are usable rather than which are flattering. In your eighties, handling is often the primary consideration, and the right routine is frequently three products rather than seven.

What this section does not do is treat each decade as a different product category. The category pages — foundation, primer, concealer, eyes — carry the depth on each product type. These pages are cross-category digests: what to prioritize at each stage, which of the category picks matters most, and what to stop doing.

The through-line worth internalizing now, because it applies at every age on this list: less product, thinner layers, more slip. Every change described above makes a thick layer of rigid product look worse, and every decade makes that truer than the one before. The routine that works at 75 is the routine that works at 45, with the amounts reduced and the formats simplified.

The mistake that runs through the whole sequence is adding rather than subtracting. The instinct when skin changes is to add a step — a primer, a setting powder, a heavier foundation, a spray. Almost always, the better move is to take something away and use less of what remains.