As someone blessed with an abundance of melanin, nothing has satisfied me as much as seeing brands realize that yes, we wear sunscreen, and no, not all sunscreen is built the same. It’s just a fact of life — wearing sunscreen takes a lot of testing, trial, and the biggest and most common problem for darker skintones is that dreaded white cast. Most common in mineral sunscreens due to zinc oxide, the white cast somehow takes me from heavily melanated to coffin-chic, and I am not here for it in the slightest. So when one of my favorite makeup brands, Live Tinted, announced Hueguard, their first move into the skincare space would be with a sunscreen promising no white cast, I yelled “sign me up!”
And according to the brand, so did 10,000 other people. No, really: According to the brand, ten thousand people signed up for the Hueguard waitlist.
You may know Live Tinted from their debut product, the Huestick, is a 4-in-1 multistick you can use on your eyes, cheeks, lips, as well as a color corrector, but Hueguard marks the brand’s first move into the skincare space. Hueguard truly is innovative — a brown-skin friendly 3-in-1 broad-spectrum mineral SPF 30 sunscreen, primer, and moisturizer that promises to dry down with zero white cast. The sunscreen was formulated with 18.23% zinc Oxide, comes in a tube made of 100% PCR, and the product is vegan, reef safe, fragrance-free, and protects from blue light. It also comes out of tube in a marigold shade, something that was important for South Asian beauty entrepreneur, influencer, and founder and CEO of Live Tinted Deepica Mutyala, who wanted to change the game when it came to sunblock for brown and Black people.
Mutyala’s goal is to bring diversity into suncare with Hueguard, which is one of the few mineral SPFs to offer zero white cast. “Hueguard is the long-awaited solution our community has been asking us to create: a suncare protection product without compromise,: Muyala said in a statement shared with GRAZIA. “Melanated skins will no longer have to decide between sun protection and looking ashy or looking good but exposing their beautiful skin to harmful UVA, UVB, and blue light. Our skin tone represents our culture, roots, and identity, and we must protect it and wear it proudly.”
For darker skin tones, it can be massively important to maintain our melanin and not look like the cousin of Casper. But really, not everyone can — or wants to — use chemical sunscreen, the more common recommendation for sunscreen for darker skin tones. Live Tinted and Hueguard are here to change the game — one tube at a time.
