The Midday Shine Problem Nobody Has Actually Solved
Oily skin and a love of makeup are a notoriously bad combination – and summer makes the whole situation worse. Foundation that disappears by noon, eyeshadow that creases into nothing, a face that looks progressively less like makeup and more like a slip-and-slide as the afternoon drags on. For anyone who’s cycled through mattifying primers, silica-setting sprays, loose powders, and oil-absorbing sheets without finding a real fix, the options start to feel like variations on the same failed promise.
One/Size just entered that crowded conversation with something structurally different: the Oil Sucker Liquid Blotting Paper Touch-Up Spray, $34, which does exactly what its name suggests – delivers the function of a blotting paper through a spray can.
The product launched recently, and a senior beauty writer at Refinery29 took it through 90-degree-plus Texas heat to find out whether it holds up outside of controlled conditions.
What’s Actually In the Can
The first thing worth clarifying is what Oil Sucker is not. It’s not a setting spray. Setting sprays – including One/Size’s own bestselling On ‘Til Dawn – are designed to lock makeup in place from the start, preventing transfer before it happens. Oil Sucker operates at a different point in the day entirely. It’s a touch-up product, meant to step in hours after application when oil has already broken through and the face needs to be reset, not protected from scratch.
The formula works by absorbing excess oil and depositing a soft-matte, blurred finish in seconds. Two ingredients carry most of the functional weight. Ginseng brings anti-inflammatory properties and, more relevant here, the ability to help regulate oil production at the skin’s surface. Magnesium aluminum silicate – a mineral-derived compound – works to create a smoother, more diffused look wherever the formula lands. Together, they account for the mattifying effect that distinguishes this from a basic hydrating or refreshing spray.
The third notable ingredient is vegan cellulose, a plant-derived material familiar from sheet masks. Its inclusion is what makes the liquid-blotting-paper concept coherent rather than just a marketing angle – cellulose is genuinely absorbent, and its presence in a spray format is what separates Oil Sucker from a silica powder or a traditional pressed compact.
The Case for a Spray Over a Sheet
Traditional blotting papers have a specific, well-documented problem: they work, but they require physical pressure on the face, which risks moving product around, smudging liner, or disrupting anything that was still sitting correctly. A spray application sidesteps that entirely. There’s no contact, no rubbing, no deliberate motion across skin – the formula settles and absorbs without the user having to make decisions about pressure or placement.
At $34 for a product designed to extend wear through a Texas summer, the value calculation depends entirely on what a person is already spending to manage the same problem. Weekly sulfur and clay masks, multiple layers of oil-control products in a morning routine, blotting sheets in a bag – none of that is free, and none of it fully solves the midday breakdown. A spray that addresses the moment directly, without disturbing what’s already on the face, fills a gap that’s been genuinely awkward to address with existing formats.
It’s also worth noting that this is a touch-up product occupying a category that doesn’t have many legitimate competitors. Most oil-control tools either work at the beginning of the routine or require physical contact to work at all. A non-contact midday reset – if the formula actually performs in heat – is a relatively uncommon thing to be able to offer.
Heat as the Real Test
Laboratory claims and real-weather performance are different things, and 90-plus-degree Texas heat is an unambiguous stress test. Most mattifying products that work adequately in temperate conditions start to struggle when sweat is part of the equation alongside oil. Whether ginseng and magnesium aluminum silicate maintain their effect when the skin underneath is actively producing both is the question that controlled testing never quite answers – but field conditions do.
What the review found, putting it through those conditions, was that the product does what it claims: it absorbs, it mattifies, and it doesn’t visibly disturb existing makeup in the process. For a product built around a fairly simple premise, that’s the bar it needed to clear, and it did.
One/Size is pricing Oil Sucker at $34, putting it above drugstore oil-control options but below the higher end of prestige skincare. Whether that price point holds for a touch-up product – something bought in addition to a full routine rather than as part of it – is the question that will determine whether it finds a sustained audience or stays a novelty. The vegan cellulose formula doesn’t have a long track record in spray formats, and summer 2025 is effectively its first real-world trial.
