Blush Is Having Its Main Character Moment

“Blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions,” Charles Darwin once wrote, dedicating an entire chapter to the face-reddening phenomenon in his book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. The famed biologist was fascinated by blushing because, not only is it something we can’t control, but “the wish to restrain it, by leading to self-attention actually increases the tendency.” (Sort of like an ouroboros of shame.) It’s ironic, then, that we’ve spent centuries trying to mimic a bodily mechanism that practically serves as a billboard for embarrassment through makeup.

Blush has always been a beauty mainstay, but in the past several years, it’s experienced a major renaissance. According to Circana, a leading market research company, blush sales reached $462 million in the U.S. prestige makeup market in the past year, with Amazon raking in $59 million. Over on TikTok, there are almost 675K videos about blush, while Klarna reports a 91% increase in searches for blush in the past year. Meanwhile, Pinterest reports a 460% increase in searches for “Igari makeup”, the flushed, under-the-eyes, across-the-nose blush look pioneered by Japanese makeup artist Igari Shinobu (and inspired by hangovers).

In 2024 alone, there have been upwards of 30 blush launches. The year kicked off with Milk Makeup’s viral Cooling Jelly Tint, which boasted a waitlist of over 60,000 people worldwide. More recent releases include Rare Beauty’s Soft Pinch Luminous Powder Blush, Haus Labs by Lady Gaga Color Fuse Glassy Blush Balm (they also brought back its Color Fuse Blush Powder Collection), Anastasia Beverly Hills’ Blurring Serum Liquid Blushes, ColourPop’s Instant Crush Lip & Cheek Balm, and Rhode’s Pocket Blush. Even Chef Gordon Ramsay plays a part in the blush craze with his Buttermelt Blush partnership with NYX Cosmetics.

Celebrity makeup artist Patrick Ta is known for his unique cream-on-top-of-powder blush technique, seen on celebrities and influencers like Gigi Hadid, Camila Cabello, and Alix Earle. As Glossy reports, the highly popular product from his eponymous brand, Major Headlines Double-Take Crème & Powder Blush Duo, holds the No. 2 spot at Sephora with a sales growth of 200-300% year-over-year. (If only Mr. Darwin knew that there’d be big money in “being embarrassed.”)

Despite its link to the involuntary emotional response, blush makeup has an undeniable appeal. Monika Blunder, makeup artist and founder of Monika Blunder Beauty, credits it to simply being a fun product you can “really play” with. “There are so many color options and formulas out there that it feels like a never-ending journey when it comes to blush. It's also such an easy way to define your look,” she says, pointing to trends like sunburn blush, favorited by Emily Ratajkowski.

A celebrity whose blush has become her signature is, of course, Sabrina Carpenter. The “Espresso” singer is as famous for her heavy, dollface flush as she is for her cheeky “Nonsense” outros. (For those who want to replicate the look, her makeup artist, Carolina Gonzalez, has revealed she uses a combination of the Armani Beauty Luminous Silk Cheek Tints in shades 53 Bold Pink and 62 Delicate Mauve.)

“Blush has always been a harbinger of health and appeal to the opposite sex,” says Gabriela Hernandez, co-founder of Bésame Cosmetics, makeup historian, and author of Classic Beauty: The History of Makeup. “Throughout history, we’ve always had red pigments. Red is the color of life, it's the color of our blood and the color of our cheeks when we're aroused. So, it denotes a lot of things, like health and vitality. It's always had that as a background element, and as societies got more sophisticated, they wanted to fake that look and fake the vitality.”

Ancient civilizations turned to a variety of natural sources to make rouge, including minerals, plants, berries, flowers, and insects. The Egyptians mixed ground red ochre (a natural clay pigment) with fats to make rouge for their cheeks. Greek women applied ochre or red alkanet root to get their color, whereas Romans would use both rose and poppy petals, or crocodilea (crocodile dung!). In Ancient China, Tang Dynasty women had a whole “red makeup era,” where they used crushed safflower to paint a heavy blush look from the jawline to the temples.

The Middle Ages saw a disdain for any color and favored pale skin, which was seen as a sign of having a leisurely life indoors and not working class. Society women went as far as using leeches to acquire that vampiric look, proving that the lengths we go to meet beauty standards have a long and storied history. Thankfully, Queen Elizabeth brought back blush with a vengeance, though she used potentially toxic vermilion (derived from mercury) for her heavily rouged look. By the late 18th century, women could partake in their rouge rituals without the health risks, as vegetable-based formulas became more available. Marie Antoinette’s rouging happened during her public toilette ceremony, where she got dressed and applied her makeup in front of an audience of spectators. “I put on my rouge and wash my hands in front of the whole world,” she wrote in a letter to her mother.

By the time the Victorian Era rolled around, overt makeup was associated with performers and prostitutes so it was considered vulgar and taboo. As such, women started to go “underground” with their makeup and seek creative ways to have some color. “During very austere periods, people pinched their cheeks to look like they were blushing,” says Hernandez. However, in the years that followed, she says that makeup became more accepted in American society due to a perfect amalgamation of the growing film industry, the rise of department stores, and women entering the workforce during the Second World War.

At the same time, brands like Max Factor, Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein, Madame C.J. Walker, Estée Lauder, and Revlon were all becoming trailblazers in the flourishing cosmetic industry. Rouge, which was beginning to be referred to as blush, was available in various colors and forms, including powder, cream, and stick. Flappers in the 1920s drew attention to their bare knees by painting them with rouge.

In the decades that followed, blush grew to become the staple makeup product we know and love. Makeup artists of the 1970s and 1980s brought innovative application techniques, such as the blush draping Way Bandy did on Cher and the sculpted, dark blush Martin Pretorius gave the leggy models in Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” music video. Blunder ​​considers the early and mid-'80s the “biggest time” for blush. “I see this period as a time of play and color. It was right before all-black and nude came back into trend, and Vogue was still filled with bright pinks and blues,” she says. “It was also a time when we began playing with the placement of blush. It became a tool to lift the face rather than just a tiny wash of color on the apples of the cheeks.”

Since then, products like Nars Orgasm, launched in 1999 (and reformulated for the first time this year), and Glossier Cloud Paint have become cult favorites in the beauty world. Leading up to today’s great blush rush, the 2010s were filled with cut creases, otherworldly highlights, and contour to the gods — neutral glam invented by drag queens and brought to the mainstream by Kim Kardashian. But as history has shown us, it was only a matter of time before blush would return to the spotlight.

The conversation surrounding blush’s big comeback may have been going on for a while now, but the recent hype doesn’t seem to be dying down anytime soon. Despite a fear of “blush blindness,” a TikTok term used to describe when someone is unsure if they’ve applied too much of the product, trendy techniques like “sunset blush” and “boyfriend blush” pop up every week. Plus, studies have shown that people who easily blush are seen as more trustworthy and generous than those who don’t. So, why not go hard on the blush and make some new friends while you’re at it, too?