Tip the black jar too enthusiastically the first time and you get a snowdrift in the lid, half of which ends up on the counter. That habit is why a lot of people decide this powder made them look chalky and never touch it again. A 29g jar should last a year of daily wear. If you’re through one in four months, the problem isn’t the powder.
The formula has been on counters since the nineties and barely changed, which in a category that reinvents itself every eighteen months is worth noticing. Finely milled, colorless on nearly everyone, one job: absorb oil and hold makeup where you put it. Whether it’s worth the money is fair to ask, though, because the mechanism isn’t proprietary and a professional-grade powder does the same work for a quarter of the price.
The verdict, up front
Oily or combination skin that wants makeup to hold for a ten-hour day, and anyone who gets photographed with a flash and refuses to gamble on it
Anyone who wants the same colorless, flash-safe set for a quarter of the price and doesn’t need the jar to look nice on a vanity
Dry, dehydrated, or textured skin that wants makeup set without the tight, papery look a straight oil-absorbing powder leaves by mid-afternoon
What Translucent Loose Setting Powder actually is
Underneath the reputation, this is a talc-based loose powder cut with magnesium myristate, nylon-12, and corn starch. Talc is the workhorse: soft, slippery, able to take up a moderate amount of oil without stripping what’s underneath. What’s absent matters more. There’s no titanium dioxide and no zinc oxide, the two ingredients that throw a camera flash straight back into the lens, and silica isn’t carrying the formula either. That absence is why this jar built its reputation on wedding days and step-and-repeats.
Loose and pressed aren’t one product in two containers. A compact needs binders and waxes to hold the cake together, and those binders give it grip; it glides, it survives a handbag, and it’s the better touch-up tool at 3pm. Loose powder has no binder at all, so the particles are finer and stay precisely where you put them. It sets more thoroughly and forgives far less, settling onto whatever is raised: a flake, a lifted edge, the fine hair along your jaw.
Setting powder and setting spray get shelved together and treated as alternatives. A spray lays a thin flexible film over finished makeup and helps it resist humidity and touching, but it absorbs nothing, and oil surfacing at hour four travels straight through. Powder is the only one of the pair that manages sebum as it arrives, and the only one that keeps concealer out of the line under your eye. We took that apart in setting spray vs setting powder; oily skin generally wants both, in that order.
Does it actually work?
On oily and combination skin, yes. Applied properly it holds a base through a long day, keeps concealer out of the crease, and lets you blot at hour six rather than rebuild. The finish is soft matte rather than flat, so a dewy foundation survives it.
The flash question it passes convincingly. Flashback is a physics problem: titanium dioxide and zinc oxide sit in makeup and sunscreen to reflect UV, and they treat a camera flash the same way, throwing back a white cast the mirror never showed you. Silica does a milder version. None of the three drives this formula, so what the camera sees is close to what you see. The sunscreen underneath is the far more common culprit, so if you’ve had flashback wearing this, look at your SPF first.
Where it falls down is dry and textured skin, and that’s structural rather than a flaw. Absorption doesn’t stop, and a binder-free powder has nothing to span an uneven surface. One more honest note: the original is talc-based, and while cosmetic talc sold in the US is required to be asbestos-free, anyone who’d rather avoid it has good talc-free options, the dupe included.
Pros and cons
Pros
- No titanium dioxide or zinc oxide, so flash photography is a non-event
- Genuinely colorless on a wide range of skin, with a deeper shade for tones the original misses
- Soft matte rather than flat, so a dewy base survives it
- One jar lasts a year or more, so the cost per wear is small
- A formula that hasn’t been reformulated out from under its fans
Cons
- Keeps absorbing all day, which reads as tight and papery on dry skin
- Binder-free, so it settles into pores and clings to flakes on textured skin
- Talc-based, which some people would rather avoid on principle
- The sifter dispenses far more than a correct application uses
- The mechanism isn’t proprietary, and a pro-grade powder does it for a quarter of the price
Who it’s for
Buy it if
Buy it if your face produces oil and your makeup has to survive a long day. Combination and oily skin get the most from a colorless, binder-free powder, because what ruins a base by mid-afternoon is sebum lifting foundation off the skin, and this absorbs it as it appears. It’s the right call too if you’re photographed with a flash and can’t afford a surprise, or if concealer creases under your eyes by lunch. Pair it with a base built for endurance and the two compound, which is roughly the argument in our long-wear everyday makeup routine.
Skip it if
Skip it when your skin runs dry, flaky, or textured. An oil-absorbing powder has no off switch; it keeps pulling for as long as it’s on your face, so skin that wasn’t producing much looks tight and papery by hour five, every flake outlined in white. Same story with visible pores: a binder-free powder has nothing to help it bridge an uneven surface, so it drops into the low spots and highlights them. If you’re unsure whether you’re dry or simply dehydrated, our piece on dehydrated vs dry skin sorts it out, and the splurge below was built for this exact problem.
How to use it
Tap, don’t scoop. Turn the jar a quarter turn, tap the side once, close it. What you want in the lid is a dusting you can barely see. Press the puff into it, or a small dense brush like the Real Techniques Setting Brush, which is narrow enough to place powder under the eye without dusting your whole cheek. Then tap the excess off against the back of your hand.
Press, don’t sweep. Sweeping drags powder across your foundation and loads three times what the job needs. Pressing straight down sets makeup in place and leaves the finish even.
Powder where oil shows up, not everywhere. For nearly everyone that’s the T-zone and under the eyes. Cheeks rarely need it, and leaving them bare keeps skin looking like skin.
Treat baking as an occasional technique. Packing a thick layer under the eyes, waiting, then dusting it off works for an event and looks heavy in daylight. Daily wear needs one light press.
Plan the removal before you apply. Loose powder plus long-wear foundation plus sunscreen is a layered, water-resistant stack, and a foaming cleanser can’t get through it in one pass. That’s the step long-wear makeup quietly demands, and where the congestion along the jaw comes from. Start with an oil or balm cleanser on dry skin until the whole face slips, emulsify with water, then follow with a gentle wash. A Banila Co Clean It Zero Cleansing Balm dissolves powder, long-wear foundation, and SPF in one pass, and something fragrance-free like La Roche-Posay Toleriane Purifying Foaming Cleanser clears the leftover oil film without stripping. Our full guide to cleansing your face walks the sequence, and if you wear SPF under this, you’re probably not getting your sunscreen off either.
The dupe: RCMA No Color Powder
RCMA No Color Powder isn’t a lookalike that borrowed the words on the box. It’s a professional film and television powder that has been doing this job on sets for decades, sold in a shaker bottle nobody would call pretty. No pigment, no fragrance, no reflective minerals, talc-free, and formulated so it doesn’t flash back. Same mechanism you’re paying Laura Mercier for.
What you give up is the grind and the packaging. Laura Mercier’s is finer and feels silkier going on, and a heavy jar with a sifter and a velour puff is a different object from a plastic bottle with a screw cap, which sounds trivial until you travel with the RCMA without taping the lid shut. What you gain is three ounces instead of one, for roughly a quarter of the price.
On performance we wouldn’t steer anyone to the expensive one. If you set your face every morning, buy the RCMA and put the difference into a base worth setting; our roundup of long-wear foundations is the better home for that money.
The splurge: By Terry Hyaluronic Hydra-Powder
By Terry Hyaluronic Hydra-Powder costs more and earns it by solving the one problem the hero can’t. It’s a colorless loose powder built around hyaluronic acid, designed to set makeup without running the absorption clock all afternoon. It blurs rather than mattifies, so it softens the look of pores and fine texture instead of dropping into them and drawing an outline.
That’s the whole case, and it’s narrow. If your skin is oily this is a worse product than the Laura Mercier at a higher price, and we’d tell you to walk past it. If your skin is dry, dehydrated, or textured and you’ve concluded you can’t wear setting powder at all, that conclusion is about the category you tried. This is the version that behaves on that skin, and the difference is in the formula, not the jar.
The catch is size: ten grams against twenty-nine, at a higher price, so the cost per wear is several times the hero’s. Use it on the two or three places that need setting rather than as an all-over dusting and it lasts longer than the small jar suggests.
FAQ
Will this cause flashback in flash photos?
It shouldn’t. None of the three reflective culprits drive this formula. If you’ve had a white cast in photos wearing it, check your sunscreen first: mineral SPF under makeup is the more frequent cause, and no powder on top fixes it.
Does the translucent shade work on deep skin?
The original leans lighter than the name promises on deeper skin, especially with a heavy hand. Translucent Medium Deep exists for that, and is the one to buy from about a medium-deep tone down. Apply it pressed and sparingly, and check it in daylight.
How much should I be using?
Far less than the sifter gives you. A barely visible dusting in the lid, tapped off before it touches your face, is a full application. If your jar empties in a few months, that’s the diagnosis, and it’s also why the finish looked chalky.
Do I need a special cleanser to take it off?
Not special, but you do need two steps. Powder over long-wear foundation over sunscreen doesn’t come off with a foaming wash alone, whatever the towel suggests. An oil or balm cleanser first, worked on dry skin, then a gentle water-based wash. Our cleansing balm guide covers how to pick one.
How we picked
The dupe had to match the hero’s mechanism rather than its marketing: a colorless, binder-free loose powder with no titanium dioxide or zinc oxide, so the flash performance carries over. RCMA does that and drops talc besides. The splurge had to solve something absorption structurally can’t, which ruled out every finely milled matte powder at a higher price and left the hyaluronic, blurring formula. We read published ingredient lists rather than claims, weighted flash behavior on the chemistry, and treated packaging as packaging.
Bottom line
Buy the Laura Mercier if you have oily or combination skin, you wear makeup for long days, and you want a powder you’ll never think about in front of a camera. The cost per wear over a jar this size is not what the sticker suggests. Dupe it with RCMA if you set your face every morning and you’d rather the money went into your foundation, because the performance gap is small and the price gap is not. Splurge on the By Terry only for the reason it exists: dry, dehydrated, or textured skin that has been told powder isn’t for it.
Carry the removal step out of this review. A setting powder is a commitment to a heavier, more water-resistant face, and it stays a good decision only if you take it off properly at night. More verdicts live in our Buy, Dupe, or Splurge archive, and the rest of our complexion coverage sits in Makeup.
