Do 2-in-1 makeup products actually work, or are you compromising?

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Chanel, Charlotte Tilbury and Hailey Bieber’s Rhode offer 2-in-1 beauty products – but are they any good?
STORYCarolina Malis
Nov 2, 2026

Multitasking makeup and skincare used to mean trade-offs. Now, a new generation of hybrid formulas promises real results in half the steps

Probably 2-in-1 shampoo was the first beauty product that offered to save you a step, and for a while it was everywhere: in every gym bag, in every travel kit, on every bathroom shelf that didn’t have room for two bottles. BB cream did something similar for the face a while later, folding moisturiser, coverage and a bit of sun protection into a single tube. With time, those two became the shorthand for what a multitasking product could do, but the list is a good deal longer now.

Blushes that double as lip stain, body lotions carrying the same actives as a face serum, scalp treatments that behave like skincare. Somewhere in there, a product doing two jobs turned into an ordinary feature of the shelf, but how do you know if a product doing two things is actually doing either of them properly?
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“Earlier hybrids were largely about convenience, combining multiple established functions in one product, often with some trade-offs,” says Deirdre Walters, product development expert and founding partner at Untapped Innovation, while today’s versions “respond to consumers who are looking to meet multiple needs through a more fluid everyday routine, without sacrificing results”

Since then, the format has reached pretty much every category you can think of, but make-up and skincare have probably blurred into each other the most. From Westman Atelier’s Vital Skincare Complexion Drops, which read as a serum but carry enough pigment to double as a foundation, to Jones Road’s Miracle Balm, which works as blush, highlighter and lip colour while leaving skin looking dewy, or Charlotte Tilbury’s Hollywood Flawless Filter, which works as a primer under make-up or a soft-focus glow worn alone, blurring pores the way a skincare product would.