The complexion category is currently being remade from the inside out. Although it was once sold on coverage claims, it now sells on serum credentials, and the brands that understood this early are reaping the commercial rewards. Ilia Beauty’s Super Serum Skin Tint SPF 40, launched in 2020 when the skin tint category barely existed, holds a high ranking in the tinted moisturizer category. According to data retrieved from Market Defense, the product averaged 33,000 searches monthly and grew by 11% year over year (YoY).
Across the broader market, search volume for “foundation with skincare” outperforms “foundation with coverage” at virtually every price point. According to Market Defense, product lines anchored by niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, peptides, ceramides, and squalane are registering triple-digit YoY sales growth. Tarte BB Blur is up 368% YoY, while The Ordinary Serum Foundation is up 212%. This data no longer leaves room for debate.
However, the category is simultaneously fragmenting by channel, demographic, and price tier. Sales of foundation on TikTok Shop hit $15.82 billion in US GMV in 2025, growing 108% YoY, making it the fastest-growing retail channel in beauty. Amazon Q1 2026 beauty CPCs are up 4.5% YoY, with brand ad spend up 7.8%. Sephora remains the prestige credibility engine: their launch of rhode in September 2025 had 40% of consumers redirecting their beauty spend from other retailers—including Ulta Beauty, Target, and even rhode’s own DTC site, making it rank among the retailer’s top ten skincare brands and generating an estimated $10 million on launch day alone. Against this backdrop, the brands that understand channel strategy as well as formulation science will win.
Five years ago, skincare and makeup operated on separate briefs. That separation no longer exists. “The complexion category has undergone a fundamental shift,” Sasha Plavsic, founder of Ilia, said to BeautyMatter. “Consumers no longer value complexion products purely for their coverage. They expect them to contribute to skin health as well.”
Haus Labs’ Chief Product Officer Gloria Ryu placed the change at the level of manufacturing itself. “It requires advanced hybrid formulation, customized raw materials, and specialized manufacturing techniques to truly bridge the two disciplines and amplify the end result,” she told BeautyMatter.
The hardest formulation challenge, by consensus, is mineral SPF at high protection levels. Consumers now want broad-spectrum protection, natural-looking coverage, a premium finish, and universal shade compatibility all at once. Ryu candidly set out the central risk. “Functional skincare actives can disrupt texture, finish, color, odor, and overall stability quite easily. When it’s done well, it’s meaningful. When it’s not, it’s marketing.”
Consumer sophistication is now a commercial forcing function. According to Colleen Timpone, Vice President of Product Development at Saie, today’s customer is incredibly informed and expects brands to back up their claims with testing and transparency. “Credentials like non-comedogenic testing have become standard for us, and they’re an important part of building trust,” she told BeautyMatter. The line between cosmetic and clinical has become a commercial variable. Brands that cannot substantiate skincare claims with clinical data are being priced out of prestige consideration.
The narrative of skin tint versus foundation is a false binary. “Rather than replacing foundation, I think skin tints have expanded the complexion category,” said Timpone.
Ryu agreed. “What we’re seeing now is consumers building a makeup wardrobe, using skin tints and foundations interchangeably depending on the day, the occasion, the mood.” Full coverage has not disappeared; it has been repositioned as an occasion-use format.
At SpaceNK, there are over 65 products, including tinted moisturizer, skin tints, color cosmetics creams, and tinted SPFs stocked, with hero brands like Erborian, Hourglass, Ilia, and newcomer Refy. “We’re definitely seeing a shift in how customers approach their complexion,” Emily Montila, Head of Makeup at SpaceNK, told BeautyMatter. “They don’t want to choose between makeup and skincare; they want both. The customer is building out a customizable complexion wardrobe based on their needs state versus a singular foundation,” she continued.
Market Defense’s search data makes the shift legible at scale. Searches for “skin tint,” “tinted moisturizer with SPF,” “tinted sunscreen,” “blurring,” and “skin-like foundation” have all risen significantly. Prestige face makeup posted a flat growth of $5.2 billion in H1 2025 sales, while the tinted moisturizer segment continued its upward trajectory. “Radiant” is now the fastest-growing finish descriptor within tinted moisturizers.
Market Defense’s Vanessa Kuykendall framed it as a structural shift that goes beyond aesthetics. “The complexion category is splitting into two lanes: viral problem-solvers and everyday skin hybrids. Color-changing foundations are winning because they promise confidence and results. Tinted sunscreens and skin tints are winning because they fit the modern routine.”
On loyalty, still the category’s most valuable commercial metric, the executives are unified. “Complexion still has the highest loyalty potential in beauty,” said Plavsic. Nearly half of all subscriptions on Iliabeauty.com are complexion products, with the Super Serum Skin Tint carrying the brand’s highest repeat-order rate. “Complexion remains the undisputed queen of loyalty: when a consumer finds their foundation, they hold on,” said Ryu.
According to Montila, searches at SpaceNK are increasing month on month, with June being its highest so far, suggesting that there is a slight seasonality with summer and lighter bases. “We are up over +300% in search volumes for Skin Tint over the past 3 months,” she revealed. Search exit is also declining, which shows that customers are finding what they’re looking for more easily.
It is important to note that the most commercially significant development in complexion right now is not happening on TikTok with Gen Z. It is happening on Facebook, targeting women over 45. Color-changing foundation, barely a search term in October 2025, exploded to over 244,000 weekly Amazon searches by mid-April 2026, driven almost entirely by Meta ad spend. The branded keyword “Luxe foundation” is now the number-two search term in the entire foundation category on Amazon, at roughly 1.8x the monthly volume of the generic term “foundation” itself.
This surge is inseparable from the mature skin consumer. Amazon’s YoY search growth in 2026 makes it clear. “Luxe foundation for mature skin” is up +2,000%; “Hush Glow makeup for older women” is up +4,000%; “tinted moisturizer for mature skin” is up +213%. According to Spate’s 2025 Year in Review, interest in mature skin makeup grew 10.4% YoY across 2025. The financial case for engagement is not marginal. Gen X’s beauty spend is projected to reach $8 billion between 2024 and 2034. NielsenIQ’s generational beauty report puts boomer online beauty spend at $11.4 billion in 2024, up 9% YoY, yet the industry has marketed almost exclusively to youth.
Market Defense’s Amy Rudgard is direct about the commercial consequences of ignoring this. “The color-changing foundation surge is the loudest commercial event in complexion right now. If complexion brands only focus on Gen Z and millennials on TikTok, it is possible they will miss what’s happening on Meta with this sleeper segment of mature-skin shoppers with significant disposable income seeking solutions that meet their needs.”
The channel mechanics compound the opportunity. Facebook reaches 72% of adults over fifty. When Meta drives a viral complexion moment for this demographic, Amazon search volume spikes within 24 to 72 hours, and brands without a strong Amazon presence leak that demand to competitors. The repurchase dynamic matters, too. Foundation carries a 60 to 90-day repurchase cycle, and tinted SPF behaves like sunscreen replenishment, with faster rotation in summer.
Market Defense’s Dave Karlsven, speaking on channel interplay, told BeautyMatter that “each channel is winning in a different part of the journey. [For] the color-changing foundation surge, Meta is upstream, and TikTok is downstream commentary. Facebook and Instagram ads targeting women over 45 manufactured demand. Amazon caught the cross-shopping, [while] TikTok creators arrived after to litigate whether the products work.”
As much as the category grows, it is also reorganizing around a consumer who has been ignored for decades and now has both the digital fluency and the purchasing power to demand attention.