Halloween Makeup Products for Professional-Level Looks

Halloween is the perfect time to pull out all the stops and fully embrace your costume with authentic makeup looks. While basic products can suffice for a low-key Halloween party, those aiming for truly terrifying, dramatic, or intricate designs require specially formulated Halloween makeup products. Here is an overview of some top-rated options across various categories to bring amateur costumes to a professional level.

Foundations and Face Paints

The foundation of any makeup starts with a base that covers skin imperfections while also adding dimension. Halloween-specific foundations and face paint work harder than everyday options to last all night without creeping, fading, or melting away. Legends Makeup and Ben Nye offer Halloween-friendly foundations that come in an extensive range of shades to match any skin tone or character.

Legends Pro FX Foundation has lasting power and a thick, creamy texture that can be easily blended without streaking. It provides full coverage to transform skin into ghoully green or corpse white. Ben Nye's TV Paint Stick lends itself well to outlining prosthetics and creating defined edges. This creamy stick formula is highly pigmented yet easy to blend. It sets to a long-wearing, non-greasy finish that stays put through parties, parades, or midnight escapades.

Another popular brand for foundations and face paints suited to Halloween is Mehron. Their Paradise AQ line delivers vivid, opaque colors in both liquid and cream/stick formats. The liquid versions layer smoothly for sheer to full coverage while the creams stick blend out effortlessly. Most importantly, these Mehron products are water-based, non-toxic, and will not budge once fully dry. They are ideal for intricate makeup designs that require precision.

Eyes and Face Details

Halloween makeup often takes eye designs and prosthetic applications to the next level with frighteningly realistic details. Special effects paints and palettes specially formulated for Halloween allow for impressive precision work.

Color FX makes enduring, super-pigmented cream and liquid paints that cover brows, eyes, and faces seamlessly. Their Face Art Kit comes with a variety of shades perfect for creating gashes, scars, and wound illusions. The included paintbrush and sponge applicators ensure clean lines.

Something slightly less macabre but equally dramatic is the Mehron Paradise paintings. Their Face Dust palette provides shimmery iridescent and pearlescent shades that bring otherworldly luminosity to the skin. It can accentuate cheekbones and eye sockets for an ethereal look. For eyes, in particular, Mehron's Chroma Cube eyeshadow palette is indispensable. Featuring jewel-toned mattes and glitters, it inspires vivid eye makeup that pops, whether you're going for a glam or ghoully effect.

Makeup FX offers frighteningly realistic flesh and blood-colored pigments too gruesome for the faint of heart! Their Gore Paints boast vibrant reds and purples perfect for gore galore. The secret is in their high opacity and creaminess which allows layers to seamlessly blend together, appearing disturbingly wet. Gore Paint brushes and applicators help achieve gory perfection down to the most disturbed details.

Body Paints

Taking a Halloween costume from head to toe requires body paints that last all night despite sweating, movement, and contact. Snazaroo and Screamliners are two crowd-pleasing body painting brands specifically made for extended Halloween wearability.

Snazaroo's Body Art paints moisturize skin while imparting bold colors that stretch, fade minimally, and rinse away cleanly with soap and water. Their variety of reds, greens, blues, yellows, and more help create vivid tattoos, wounds, and intricate illusions over large swaths of skin. Plus, they are kid-safe and dermatologist-tested.

Screamliners' liquid and cream body paints also nourish skin courtesy of conditioning ingredients like shea butter and vitamin E. Available in a 100-color palette, they deliver a hyper-saturated payoff smooth as silk. Screamliners dry to a long-wearing, transfer-resistant finish that stays locked in place through physical activity. Their precision brushes allow intricate line work and detail down to the microscopic. Just add water to remove at the party's end with no damage to the skin below.

For out-of-this-world metallic prosthetic looks, Mehron's liquid body paints and StarBlend powders are top performers. Their liquid paints glide on like silk, intensifying saturation upon drying. Mehron StarBlend powders then take metallic finishes to maximum extremes, adhering readily to primed skin. Both withstand perspiration well for body illusions too extraordinary for party-goers accustomed to run-of-the-mill costumes.

Finally, makeup brands like Ben Nye and Kryolan have gained notoriety for holding up through dancing, swimming, and other strenuous circumstances. Their body paint ranges from opaque, vivid color to natural-flesh tone for camouflaging costumes. Brushes are shaped for everything from delicate details to swift coverage of broad surfaces. All promise excellence through even the rowdiest Halloween shenanigans.

Special F/X and Prosthetics

Elevating Halloween looks with fake blood, wounds, and prosthetics requires products formulated for comfort, adhesion, and longevity. Brands like DermaFlage, Epifex, and Smooth-On lead the specialty effects industry with Hollywood FX creations adapted for home haunters.

DermaFlage's ProFlex line depicts horrid burns, scarred skin graft illusions, and more through life-like silicone prosthetics. Their lightfast FlexPaste pigments further decay or discolor skins with distressingly natural realism. And DermaFlage's Spirit Gum adhesive keeps even the most involved prosthetics glued in place durably.

For lacerations, gashes, and any faux mutilations, Epifex wound, and scar formulas are gore galore favorites. Their gel-like Creations mold realistically over contours, hold graphic details, and retain flex with skin. Creations also transition smoothly through shades of blues, purples, and reds as "injuries" heal or expire. Epifex Facial FX lets the squeamish simulate melting flesh for truly cringe-worthy visages too.

Finally, horror hounds love Smooth-On's Phat Tear blood and liquid latex collection for convincingly crafting monsters. Phat Tear blood bursts, drips, and splatters naturally, cleaning up easily with just water. Meanwhile, Smooth-On's latex dries quickly to portray swelling, tumors, or skin breakdown so disgustingly life-like party-goers will question if it's real. These pros thrive on realism that lingers in memories long after Halloween ends.

Makeup Tools

No makeup kit is complete without artist-grade brushes, sponges, and application tools. Look to Kryolan, RCMA, and MAC for pro-level brushes and Blender sponges that lend seamless control and blending when used with Halloween makeup.

Kryolan’s wide brush selection features synthetic fibers cut at precise angles and densities for jobs both large and micro. Densely packed shader brushes lay down pigment thickly while fluffier bristles smoothly buff and blend. Their ProConcealer brush expertly places pastes and liquids with a tapered point.

RCMA makeup artists swear by the brand's brush set for complex technical makeup. Their pointed contour brush defines edges sharply while larger brushes wash on bases quickly. RCMA Blender sponges soak up excess moisture to refine edges to perfection.

Finally, MAC brushes have become the gold standard of the industry and remain so for Halloween FX too. Their 239 and 217 brushes are essential for precise cut creases and highlighting, while their 150 and 135 angled brushes structure contoured cheekbones with ease. All maintain high-quality fibers suited to even the most heavily loaded pigments.

Stocking Up for Seasonal Scares

With these top picks from Legends, Mehron, Ben Nye, Kryolan, DermaFlage, and more, aspiring haunters and costume artists can achieve intricately gruesome or shockingly beautiful designs worthy of competition. Professional Halloween makeup invests in products finely tuned to stick, blend, and pop through all the thrills and chills the season brings. So come October, stock up the kit and get creative bringing the season's scariest visions to reality-bending life!