Our Favorite Trends of Summer 2026
It is September, which means it is technically still summer for three more weeks and emotionally not at all. The iced coffees are getting suspicious looks. Someone in the LA studio wore a sweater on a 91-degree day out of pure aspiration. So before we all pivot to plum lips and pretend we never owned a sunburnt blush, a moment for the trends that actually earned their place this summer: the ones we wore, drank, booked, and walked in, ranked in an order that will hold up to no scrutiny at all.
A note on methodology. Summer 2026 was, by the industry's own account, the season skinimalism loosened up. Less clean girl, more person who has been outside. And we’ve always been into it.
1. Beach skin (specifically, the sunburnt nose)
The defining makeup trend of summer 2026 was blush. Rosy-orange, placed high on the cheeks and, crucially, across the bridge of the nose, so the whole face reads as "fell asleep on a towel for twenty minutes." The trick that made it wearable rather than clownish: a cream or balm formula, pressed in with fingers, and never powdered. Under it, the real thing, which brings us to the trend we liked even more.
We love cloud paint…it’s really that good.
2. SPF as skincare, finally
This was the summer sunscreen stopped being the step you did and started being the step you liked. The new generation of mineral and hybrid formulas (searches for mineral sunscreen roughly doubled this year, and we felt every one of them at the front desk) are glowy, tinted, sheer, hydrating, and stacked with the same peptides and antioxidants as your serum. The "SPF as skincare" framing sounds like a marketing line until you realize it's the single highest-return product in any skin longevity routine and always has been. If your fall resolution is one thing, make it this: sunscreen every day, all the way to the hairline, whether or not the sky is doing anything.
You need this no-cast mineral SPF 50 that we love.
3. Hyperreal skin
Hyperreal skin isn't "no makeup makeup" so much as skin that looks intentional: hydrated, a little sculpted, lit in specific places, texture left alone. It's the look of someone who gets a facial on a schedule, which, in our experience, is exactly what it is. Everything we said in late summer about scheduled beauty applies here. You can fake hyperreal skin with a glow serum and a good concealer for one evening. You can have it, every day, with a treatment plan and some patience. The second option involves less product.
4. The hazy pout
Summer's lip was blurred. Not lined, not matte, not glossy exactly, but soft-focus and "just bitten," like it was applied with a brush and then thought better of. The hazy pout; Rhode's Lip Shape in Balance and Summer Fridays Dream Lip Oil did most of the heavy lifting on our counters. What we love about it is that it's a description of what a good lip blush looks like at week three. A diffused wash of color, a border that's defined but never drawn, tone evened out, nothing to reapply. We've been doing the hazy pout since 2015. Nice of everyone to catch up.
Tired of the reapply? Book your lip blush at GBY Los Angeles.
5. The Korean lash lift
The most-searched lash term of 2026, and the service that generated the most "wait, what's different?" comments on our IG this summer. Short version: a gentler, more customized lash lift using soft silicone shields and milder solutions for a rounded, from-the-root curl that looks like your lashes, just better, and grows out without a kink. Paired with a tint, it's the closest thing we offer to a summer face that survives a swim. It'll survive fall too — especially because you’ll be obsessed.
Book your Korean lash lift at GBY Los Angeles.
6. Lymphatic glow
Tools are back. Gua sha, ice globes, a cold roller kept in the fridge next to the electrolytes. The summer version of "lymphatic drainage" was less about sculpting a jawline and more about looking un-puffy at 7 a.m. after a night that ended at 1. Our take: the five-minute morning gua sha is real, it works, and it's better with a facial oil than a serum. The forty-minute YouTube tutorial is not necessary. Two minutes up the neck, two minutes out from the nose, done.
7. Skin cooling
Related, and very much a heatwave trend: cooling skincare. Chilled mists, menthol-adjacent lip treatments, cryo eye masks, sleeping masks that felt like a glass of water. The science is modest (cooling constricts vessels and calms redness, temporarily) but the ritual is excellent, and in a summer where LA hit triple digits four separate times, "temporarily" was plenty. Our favorite version cost nothing: a bottle of water mist in the fridge and a face wash with cold water before the SPF.
What you need? A skincare fridge.
8. Protein coffee
We wrote a whole post about it in August and stand by every word. Protein coffee, the iced latte with a scoop of collagen or whey stirred in, went from gym-bro thing to the drink of every walking club and 9 a.m. brow appointment in Silver Lake. It's a beauty trend because collagen is a beauty ingredient, and it's a wellness trend because it's the one habit people actually kept. Ours: cold brew, vanilla protein, a splash of oat milk, no sweetener because the protein is already doing that.
Get your GBY Protein Coffee — 10g of protein per serving.
9. Electrolytes, everywhere
Electrolyte packets were the accessory of summer 2026. In the tote bag, in the studio water cooler, in the fridge in a suspicious rainbow of colors. The beauty angle, which we broke down in June, is real: hydration at the cellular level shows up in skin plumpness, under-eye texture, and how well your SPF sits. The wellness angle is that people finally figured out water alone wasn't cutting it in August. Take the electrolyte trend into fall.
Check out the GBY Electrolyte Pops — functional frozen wellness.
10. Walking is the new going out
The trend we're proudest of, because we got there early. This was the summer drinks became walks, and it stuck: the first-and-third-Saturday walking club at the Silver Lake Reservoir is bigger now than in June, and the group is starting to have opinions about socks. The beauty routine for a walk is the whole GBY philosophy in one line: sunscreen, laminated brows, lifted lashes, lip balm, out the door. Movement without punishment, community without choreography, no reservation required. Fall walks are going to be better.
And the trends we're leaving at the beach
Grown-up glitter, which was lovely on the runway and less lovely in a pillowcase. Y2K frosted lips, which we respect as a concept. The forty-step lymphatic sculpting routine (see above). Anything described as "glass" that required more than two products. And the idea, still floating around, that low-maintenance means low-effort. It doesn't. It means you did the effort once, in a chair, and now you get your mornings back.