Kristen Bell’s Guide to Anti-Redness Skin Care and Daytime Makeup

The actor shares her beauty secrets, from her ultimate skin-care savior to the tinted moisturizer that keeps redness at bay.

Kristen Bell’s Guide to Anti-Redness Skin Care and Daytime Makeup

For Kristen Bell, who often begins each morning on set transforming into The Good Place’s Eleanor Shellstrop—or, more recently, a scheming, curly-haired coupon clipper for *Queenpins—*a complexion-cleansing regimen doesn’t take place until midday. “I’m starting having just gotten off work, so I’m wearing quite a bit of makeup,” the 41-year-old actress says as she removes any traces of color with a CBD coconut oil from her line, Happy Dance. With a bare face, she then pulls out her ultimate skin-care weapon: Clarisonic’s now-discontinued exfoliating brush. “I have my trusty old one from years ago, and I’ve been obviously scouring eBay to make sure that I still have one since they don’t make them anymore,” she says before layering on iS Clinical’s Active Serum, SkinCeuticals’s Photo Corrective Gel, and Dr. Barbara Sturm’s Eye Cream, the last of which she applies both under her eyes and around her lips.

But, as she’s quick to point out, a carefully tended to visage requires more than masks and moisturizers. “When you’re focused on skin care, I think people miss the steps that affect the skin so much, which is your mental health or your stress,” Bell explains, noting that she prioritizes an inside-out routine which includes proper hydration, eight or nine hours of sleep each night, and, perhaps surprisingly, silence. “[Meditation]… is calming to my skin… because it’s calming to my mind,” she says. “If I can find 10 minutes once or even twice a week, my whole body, my digestion, my skin, my attitude, it’s all calmer.”

Such a 360-degree approach allows her to cut back in the makeup department. “I used to feel like I was so concerned with how I look, [but] I think in my 30s and 40s I realized it really is more about health and how I feel,” she muses. “That’s kind of what I’m coming to terms with with my skin is I want my skin to feel healthy at all times.” Nevertheless, she does reach for a few redness-reducing products, such as Saie’s SPF 35 Tinted Moisturizer and IT Cosmetics’s CC+ Cream. She then employs a light-handed touch with her go-to brown MAC mascara, creamy Tata Harper blush pot, and Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk balm—many of which have caught the eyes of her two daughters, aged six and eight. As for Bell’s parenting philosophy when it comes to beauty? “I think makeup and skin care is exactly like clothing… Does it make you feel fun to have a lipstick on?” she asks. “Then wear it!”

Below, shop Kristen Bell’s Beauty Secrets.