Soft, blurred, and beautifully diffused, watercolor blush is the painterly flush that’s quietly stealing the spotlight. Its defining feature? A wash of color with no harsh lines in sight. “The watercolor blush is a soft veil of product applied to the cheeks,” celebrity makeup artist Carolina Gonzalez, whose ethereal makeup aesthetic is often inspired by Alberto Vargas’s watercolor pinup girls, tells Vogue. “Think of the finish as the difference between oil paint (opaque) and watercolors (diffused and buildable). You can’t see where the application of watercolor blush starts or ends, because it melts into the skin with no detectable edges.” Gonzalez is known to paint this ethereal look on the likes of Sabrina Carpenter and Gigi Hadid, though Kendall Jenner, Simone Ashley, Dua Lipa, Lily-Rose Depp, and more seem to be watercolor blush enthusiasts too.
Quite literally mimicking the effect of watercolor paint on paper, pro makeup artist Kasey Spickard equates its rise in popularity to beauty’s shift towards skin-care-makeup hybrids as another take on a natural flush—perhaps even a reactionary response to the heavy matte makeup of the 2010s. “This blush trend is super dreamy, emphasizing a soft wash of color to the cheeks,” says Spickard. “We’re seeing the watercolor blush trend as we continue to see this skin-forward, soft-focus ethereal makeup continue to dominate the beauty space.”
