Review: Jane Iredale Zap & Hide Blemish Concealer

I am SO bummed that my skin has taken a turn to Acneville in the past week, but I’m taking full advantage of it by testing out some of the acne-fighting products that my skin doesn’t usually respond to. Jane Iredale recently released a “new & improved” version of their Zap & Hide Blemish Concealer, although I’m not too sure what’s new and improved, because I don’t have any previous experience with it.

Zap & Hide is pretty simple in concept—it’s a dual-end stick formula with a concealer on one end, and a spot treatment on the other.

More details…

I wish I had oodles of great things to say about this product, but sadly, I don’t. On the bright side—I really like the treatment end of the stick. On the not-so-bright side, I didn’t find the concealer to be very effective at all. In all fairness, I did not have the correct concealer shade at all (it’s available in three shades), but I knew it wasn’t very pigmented or easy to work with when the shade didn’t even matter. As I moved this around on my skin, it basically disappeared, offering just the minimal amount of coverage that didn’t help at all on my pimples or broken capillaries. It’s a water-based formula, so it’s pretty gentle, but it just didn’t do the trick for me. I’ve tried this both with a synthetic concealer brush, and by tapping it on and blending, and it didn’t make a difference.

The treatment end however, is another story. Although unique, it’s more of a balmy-texture, so I don’t think it’s very ideal for wearing underneath makeup—but I have worn it on bare skin during the day and at night. It swaps out ingredients that tend to over dry the skin in traditional acne treatments, for natural extracts like tea tree, chamomile, and green tea. If anything, I think this does a better job at bringing down the inflammation and redness in my blemishes, than the concealer hid them—so I was pretty surprised. It’s kind of soothing too, and I appreciate the naturally antiseptic ingredients. In all honesty, I just think $26 is a little much for such a small product, in half of which I didn’t find very beneficial.

Shade Z3 is obviously too dark and too pink for my skin, but once it was blended in, I could barely see the concealer at all, as it didn’t offer much coverage.

Bottom Line…

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed with this product. It’s a little pricey and the concealer didn’t cover much of anything for me. The redeeming quality in my opinion, is in the natural healing benefits of the anti-inflammatory and antiseptic ingredients of the blemish-treatment balm.