Oily skin and creases at the same time

A lightweight liquid with medium coverage, a natural finish and a wide shade range.

A medium-coverage liquid with a natural, slightly satin finish is the right answer for oily mature skin, and this is the most dependable one. It holds up through a day without being engineered as a longwear matte, so it does not set into something brittle. The shade range is wide, the pump meters properly, and it takes powder well in the T-zone without going cakey where you did not powder.

A baked powder foundation that goes on creamy and sets demi-matte, with buildable light-to-medium coverage.

The best shine solution on this page, because it addresses oil with a format rather than a hard film. It is a baked powder that goes on creamy and sets demi-matte, so it absorbs some surface oil while staying flexible — and because there is no liquid phase, there is nothing to slide as the day warms up. For combination mature skin it is also easy to use lightly at the dry edges and build in the center.

A lightweight liquid with a natural finish and an antioxidant-led ingredient list.

Lightweight, natural-finish and genuinely inexpensive, which matters if you are going through more product than someone with dry skin. The thin texture is the useful part: on oily skin a thin layer survives much better than a thick one, because there is less for the sebum underneath to break down.

A buildable medium-coverage liquid with a radiant, silk-like finish and a broad shade range.

The radiant finish is the opposite of what oily skin usually wants, which is exactly why it is here with a caveat: for an evening, with the T-zone powdered, it gives a lit-from-within look that no matte can, and it holds its shape for hours. Build it thin and let the powder do the shine management.

A matte-finish primer with plant extracts, aimed at reducing the look of pores.

This is the targeted-control product on the page. A matte primer used only across the nose, chin and center of the forehead buys you several hours before shine shows, without putting a mattifying film anywhere near your smile lines or under-eye. Used that way it is one of the few genuinely useful primers for this skin type.

A clear gel primer with a tacky grip finish, designed to hold foundation in place.

If your actual complaint is that foundation slides off rather than that you look shiny, grip is the fix, not mattifying. This is a clear tacky gel that gives the foundation something to hold onto, which keeps a thin layer in place for considerably longer — and because it is a grip film rather than a mattifying one, it does not dry the skin out underneath.

A very finely milled translucent powder with a low-weight, soft-focus finish.

The powder question on mature skin is entirely about milling. A coarsely milled powder sits visibly in a crease and ages the face; a very finely milled one controls oil at a fraction of the weight. This one is about as fine as the category gets, which means you can set the T-zone and not see the line of where you stopped.