To hide a hickey naturally, use clothing like turtlenecks or scarves, style your hair to cover it, or try home remedies like cold/warm compresses, aloe vera, or massaging with a spoon to speed fading, but makeup (color corrector + concealer) is the quickest cover-up if you need immediate concealment.
Crush up an aspirin and rub it on the hickey. Also, take a hair comb (like a wide tooth one) and rake it across the bruise. Both will diffuse the bruise and make it seem less obvious.
Like other bruises, hickeys can take anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks to go away. Hickeys are superficial bruises, which means they are on the surface of your skin. These types of bruises usually don't take as long to heal as deeper bruises like black eyes.
Neutralize the Discoloration
Use a green color corrector for red undertones or a peach corrector for purple tones. Lightly dab it on the hickey and blend out the edges to balance the skin tone before applying foundation.
“Any abrasive treatment of the skin like scrubbing with toothpaste or trying to scratch off the discoloration would be too superficial to impact the hickey. And it could even make the problem more apparent with scratches, bleeding, additional discoloration and scar formation.”
Tell them it's a mark leftover from touching something hot.
These are especially good excuses for when you have a hickey on your neck. “I was straightening my hair and burned my neck with the flat iron.” “I was waxing and made the wax way too hot.” “I left a heating pad on for too long and it actually left a mark.”
Beyond pulse dye laser, Zeichner says that topical creams like Arnica or Vitamin K are your best bet for a speedy recovery. Plus, Zeichner says if the skin barrier is disrupted and the hickey becomes dry or itchy, you can also apply Vaseline petroleum jelly to protect the skin from infection and keep the wound clean.
You can apply a warm compress for 5 to 10 minutes to your hickey once or twice a day. For your compress, you can use a reusable heating pad. You want to make sure that the compress is warm but not hot. If the compress is too hot, it can burn the already damaged skin, making redness worse and skin changes more obvious.
Lip balm cap
Using the cap from a tube of lip balm to massage the skin is yet another suggestion that pops up all over Google. As with the massage techniques listed above, this won't “break apart” the hickey either.
While the healing process may take up to 2 weeks, here are a few tips that will help any bruise to the skin, including hickies: Put an ice or cold pack on it right away to reduce pain and swelling. Repeat the cold treatment several times a day for 10 to 20 minutes each session.
How to Get Rid of a Hickey Quickly?
Since hickeys often have a reddish or purple hue, applying a green color corrector can help counteract the color and make it easier to conceal.
According to makeup artist Ivy Boyd, you want to use a color corrector and concealer to hide a hickey. A fresh hickey has red and/or purple undertones, so apply a green corrector to red areas and a yellow corrector to purple areas. Then, use a concealer that matches your skin tone and set with powder.
The healing process of a bruise involves the breakdown and reabsorption of blood released by the damaged blood vessels. Cooling the injury site with ice may help slow the initial blood flow. Following with warm compresses can encourage the metabolic processes that break down and carry away the damaged cells.
Luckily, covering it up with color corrector and concealer is an easy, effective way to make your hickey look like it never even happened.
The truth is, hickeys, or “love bites,” are really no big deal. There's never any reason to shame someone for having one — like all forms of consensual sexual behavior, you don't have to justify someone making out with your neck!
Other skin conditions that look like hickeys