Makeup expires by category, and the clock starts the day you open it, not the day you buy it. Mascara and liquid eyeliner get three months, full stop — they sit closest to your eye and they’re the wettest thing in the bag. Liquid foundation and concealer run six to twelve months. Cream blush, cream bronzer and cream eyeshadow also land at six to twelve. Pressed powders, blushes, bronzers, setting powders and wood pencils hold up for as long as two years because there’s almost no water in them for bacteria to live in. Lipstick and gloss sit at one to two years, closer to one once a cold sore or a shared tube gets involved. The little open-jar symbol on the packaging gives you the manufacturer’s own number.
The jar symbol, and what it’s really telling you
Look on the back of the box or the underside of the tube for a small drawing of an open cosmetics jar with a number in it: 6M, 12M, 24M. That’s the period after opening — the brand’s own statement about how long the formula stays stable once air and skin have reached it. 12M means twelve months from first use.
The word opening does all the work in that sentence. A sealed foundation sitting in a drawer is barely aging — the preservative system is intact and nothing has been introduced to it. Break the seal and you start adding bacteria from your fingers, moisture from the air, and oxygen. A tube bought two years ago and opened last week is a fresh tube. Retail shelf time is not your problem; your bathroom counter is.
PAO isn’t a legal deadline and it isn’t a poison line. It’s a stability estimate made under lab conditions, with a clean swab, not with a used sponge and a steamy shower six feet away. Treat it as the optimistic version.
Water is the whole logic of the category
If you only remember one principle, make it this one: bacteria and mold need water. A formula built on water — foundation, mascara, liquid liner, cream blush, a gel liner in a pot — is a habitat. A formula with no water in it at all, called anhydrous, is not. Pressed powder, loose powder, a wax-and-oil lipstick bullet, a wood pencil: nothing living can set up shop in those without you introducing moisture first.
That distinction explains the entire table below, and why the numbers look so uneven. Three months for mascara and two years for a bronzer isn’t inconsistency. One is a warm wet tube you plunge a used wand into every morning; the other is a compressed brick of powder.
Preservatives are what keep the water-based formulas usable for the months they do get, and they’re finite. Every dip of a finger, every day the cap sits off, every degree of heat depletes them faster. A foundation you pump is protected better than one you unscrew and scoop.
Product by product
| Product | After opening | What going off looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Mascara | 3 months | A sharper, sourish or petroleum-ish smell; clumping and stringiness that no amount of wiping fixes; drying out and flaking mid-day; any stinging or watering |
| Liquid or gel eyeliner | 3 months | Skipping and dragging, a gritty drag on the lid, separation in the tube, gel gone tacky or crumbly in the pot |
| Liquid foundation | 6-12 months | Separation that doesn’t re-mix after shaking, an oxidized darker or oranger shade, a rancid or crayon-like smell, a thinner and more watery pour |
| Liquid or stick concealer | 6-12 months | Thickening in the wand, patchiness over the same skin it used to cover, oil pooling at the top |
| Cream blush, bronzer, eyeshadow | 6-12 months | A dried edge or skin on the surface, a grainy break in the texture, a stale-oil smell, color that no longer blends |
| Pressed powder, blush, bronzer, setting powder | Up to 2 years | A hard shiny film on the pan from skin oil on the brush, powder that stops picking up, mustiness |
| Powder or wood-cased eyeliner and lip pencil | Up to 2 years | Very little, if you sharpen it — sharpening cuts a fresh surface. Watch for softening, sweating or a mold spot on the wood |
| Lipstick and lip liner | 1-2 years | A waxy or crayon smell, sweating beads of oil, a white bloom on the bullet, a change in feel from creamy to draggy |
| Lip gloss and liquid lipstick | 1 year | Separation, a sticky or curdled texture, a smell that has gone off the sweet note it started with |
| Gel or cream brow product | 6-12 months | Same failure mode as mascara — it dries in the pot and stiffens on the wand |
| Makeup sponge | Replace every 1-3 months | Staining that won’t wash out, tearing at the edges, a smell after drying, any visible spotting |
| Nail polish | 1-2 years | Thickening, stringing off the brush, a separated layer that won’t roll back together |
The signs a product has gone off
Smell changes first and it’s the most reliable instrument you have. Cosmetics are fragranced partly to cover the base smell of the oils and waxes in them, so when the fragrance fades and something sour, metallic or faintly like old cooking oil comes through, the formula has moved on.
Then texture. Foundation that pours thinner than it used to. A cream blush with a dried skin across the top. Mascara gone stringy in a way a wipe of the wand won’t fix.
Separation is a real signal in some products and a red herring in others. A mineral sunscreen or a foundation that’s meant to be shaken will separate by design — shake it and watch. If it comes back together smoothly, it’s fine. If there’s a watery layer that won’t reincorporate, or a gritty sediment at the bottom, it’s done.
Color shift is a quiet one. Foundation and concealer oxidize with air exposure and creep darker or more orange over months, so a shade that matched in spring stops matching by autumn even though your skin hasn’t changed much.
Stinging is the one to take seriously and stop for. If a product tingles, stings, waters your eye or leaves your lid pink when it never used to, throw it out that day rather than testing whether it settles. Eye irritation that persists after you stop, or any redness, discharge, swelling or change to your vision, belongs to a doctor, not to a blog post. Contact lens wearers should be stricter across the board.
Why mascara is the strictest case in the bag
Mascara breaks every rule at once. It’s water-based, so bacteria have somewhere to live. It’s dark and sealed, so nothing about the tube discourages them. It sits in a warm bathroom. And the design of the thing pumps air straight into the reservoir every single time you pull the wand out and push it back — along with whatever the wand picked up off your lashes and lid, which includes skin flora and, if you’ve had one, the tail end of an eye infection.
Three months isn’t ceremony. Ophthalmology guidance settled on that number because the eye’s surface is fragile and the consequences — irritation, styes, conjunctivitis, rarely a corneal infection — are worse than getting it wrong with a bronzer. Research on used mascara tubes has repeatedly found bacterial growth in a sizeable share of them well before the tube runs out.
Two habits make it worse, and both are common. Pumping the wand in and out to load it drives air in and dries the formula faster; twist and pull instead. And adding water or saline to revive a drying tube introduces the exact thing the preservative system is rationed for. A drying mascara at ten weeks is a mascara at the end of its life, not one that needs thinning. Same rules apply to liquid liner, and doubly to anything used on the waterline.
Powders last. The brushes touching them don’t.
A pressed bronzer can outlive a relationship. Nothing grows in it. But it’s contaminated every time a dirty brush lands on it, and the hard glazed film on a well-loved pan is skin oil and dead cells pressed into the powder — a food source in a place that had none.
So the two-year figure is conditional on the tools. A brush used daily on foundation or cream product wants washing weekly; powder brushes stretch to two or three weeks. Sponges are the worst offender in any bag — damp, porous, and usually stored somewhere that never fully dries. Wash them every few uses and replace them every one to three months rather than nursing a stained one along for a year.
Scraping the glaze off a pan with a clean spatula restores it, and wiping lipstick bullets and pencil tips with alcohol is worth doing before you lend anything. Neither trick resets the calendar on a water-based product.
Write the date on it
The single change that fixes all of this is a pen. Nobody remembers when they opened a foundation. Put the month on the bottom of the tube the day you break the seal and the guesswork disappears.
An oil-based paint marker writes on glass and plastic and doesn’t rub off in a warm bathroom. Removable dot labels work if you’d rather not mark the packaging. Then store things cool and dry — a bedroom drawer beats a bathroom shelf by a wide margin, because heat and shower steam shorten everything on this page. More on tools and technique in our makeup archive.
Oil-based paint marker
Writes on glossy plastic, glass and metal and survives a steamy bathroom. Put the month you opened it on the base of every liquid product
Removable dot labels
The no-commitment version if you resell, return or just hate marking packaging. Peels off clean
Solid brush cleanser
A solid puck lasts far longer than a bottle and lifts cream product out of bristles better than soap. The bottleneck on brush washing is friction, so make it easy
Brush drying rack
Dries brushes head-down so water can’t run into the ferrule and rot the glue. Cheap, and the reason your brushes shed less
Makeup sponge multipack
Buy sponges in a pack so replacing one every couple of months stops feeling like a decision. A stained sponge is not a clean sponge
Acrylic makeup organizer
Visibility is a shelf-life tool. Products you can see get used and rotated; products in a pile at the back of a drawer get kept for four years
Dual cosmetic sharpener
Sharpening a wood pencil cuts a fresh, clean surface — the reason pencils outlast every other eye product. Wipe the blade between uses
70% isopropyl alcohol spray
A mist over lipstick bullets, pencil tips and pressed pans sanitizes the surface. It’s a hygiene step, not an expiry reset
Prices move constantly, so we link to live listings instead of printing a number that is wrong by the time you read it. Links go to Amazon, which is where a referral gets credited.
If I Were You
If you can’t remember when you opened your mascara throw it out today and start the habit with the new one. An unknown mascara is an old mascara, because you’d remember buying it recently.
If your foundation has gone darker or oranger on your skin that’s oxidation in the bottle, not a change in your face. Check whether it separates and won’t re-mix; if it does, replace it, and store the next one somewhere cool and dark.
If you only wear makeup a handful of times a year buy small and don’t stockpile. A rarely used liquid still ages on its opened clock, so a big bottle bought for value gets thrown away half-full. Powders and pencils are where the money should go.
If you’ve just had an eye infection, a stye or pink eye replace every eye product you touched during it — mascara, liner, shadow if you used a wet applicator — and sanitize or replace the brushes. Ask your doctor when it’s safe to go back to eye makeup rather than guessing.
If your powders have a hard shiny glaze on the pan scrape the top layer off with a clean edge and wash the brush that did it. The powder is likely fine; the tool was the problem all along.
If you’ve got a drawer full of things you’re not sure about sort by category rather than agonizing item by item. Every mascara and liquid liner goes. Every liquid and cream over a year goes. Powders and pencils get a smell test and mostly stay.
Frequently asked questions
Does unopened makeup expire?
Slowly. Sealed and stored somewhere cool, a foundation or lipstick holds up well past its PAO number, because that clock hasn’t started. Most brands work to a two-to-three-year unopened shelf life as a general rule, and products with a printed hard expiry date — anything with SPF, or a drug-classified active — should be respected on that date whether opened or not. Heat is the enemy either way: a sealed product left in a hot car ages fast.
Can I use a mascara past three months if it looks fine?
Looking fine isn’t the test. Bacterial growth in a mascara tube is invisible, and the risk sits on the most vulnerable surface on your face. If you wear contacts, have had a recent eye infection, or have any eye condition, hold the three-month line without negotiating. Otherwise you’re making a small personal gamble with a low but real infection risk — and if anything stings, waters or reddens, stop immediately and see a doctor if it doesn’t settle.
Where’s the safest place to store makeup?
A bedroom drawer or a closet shelf. Bathrooms swing between hot and humid several times a day, the condition under which preservatives fail fastest and powders cake. Keep everything out of direct sun and off windowsills. A mini fridge isn’t necessary for makeup, though it’s harmless for water-based skincare in a hot climate — more on that in our skincare archive.
What do people keep for far too long?
Mascara, by a mile — three months feels absurdly short until you consider what the wand is doing. Then liquid eyeliner, kept in a drawer for years and dug out for occasions. Then sponges, washed and reused long past the point where they’re staining and tearing. Expensive things get kept longer than cheap ones, and price has nothing to do with whether a cream blush is still good.
The short version
Water-based means months. Waterless means years. Anything that goes near your eye is on the short clock regardless of what it cost, and the jar symbol is a starting point rather than a verdict. Write the date on the tube and the whole thing stops being a question.
This one’s part of our beauty basics nobody teaches you series, alongside how to push back cuticles safely.
