My Foundation Swatches and How to Choose a Foundation

(Click on images to enlarge)

Products from left to right, MaxFactor Miracle Touch in Creamy Ivory 40, Bourjois 10 hour sleep effect in Abricote Clair 71, Bourjois Flower Perfection 51,  MaxFactor Second Skin Foundation Creamy Ivory, MaxFactor Miracle Touch Warm Almond 45, Avon Ideal Flawless Ivory, Maybelline SuperStay 24h Ivory 10, the final colour is Boots Natural Collection Colour Foundation in Porcelain (I don't know why I forgot to put the bottle in the lineup ontop). 

Swatches from left to right, MaxFactor Miracle Touch in Creamy Ivory 40, Bourjois 10 hour sleep effect in Abricote Clair 71, Bourjois Flower Perfection 51, MaxFactor Second Skin Foundation Creamy Ivory, MaxFactor Miracle Touch Warm Almond 45, Avon Ideal Flawless Ivory, Maybelline SuperStay 24h Ivory 10, the final colour is Boots Natural Collection Colour Foundation in Porcelain (I don't know why I forgot to put the bottle in the lineup ontop). 

Products from left to right, MaxFactor Miracle Touch in Creamy Ivory 40, Bourjois 10 hour sleep effect in Abricote Clair 71, Bourjois Flower Perfection 51, MaxFactor Second Skin Foundation Creamy Ivory, MaxFactor Miracle Touch Warm Almond 45, Avon Ideal Flawless Ivory, Maybelline SuperStay 24h Ivory 10, the final colour is Boots Natural Collection Colour Foundation in Porcelain (I don't know why I forgot to put the bottle in the lineup ontop). 

Images of the swatches in artificial/sun light and with/without flash.

I will get round to reviewing each of these products individually but I wanted to create a tutorial on how to find the perfect foundation first.  The order of my foundation swatches represent the order of the foundations I use from my favourite on the left, to the ones I hate on the right.

My Foundations - This first section will show you the processes I have gone through to find foundations that are perfect for me!

My skin tone is very fair with natral yellow undertones, I will explain more about this later in the post but for now here are the my thoughts on the foundations I own.

Foundations I Love

 MaxFactor Miracle Touch in Creamy Ivory 40

This foundation I use on days where my skin is a bit dry but I want a foundation that has very good coverage.  It is slightly oily so does not dry out my skin so is absolutely perfect for winter but on the other hand I would never use this foundation in hot weather because it begins to melt.  The colour is perfect for me  and I absolutely love this foundation but there is not very much of it in the pot (11.5g) and it seems to only last me three or four weeks which at £12.99 is a bit ridiculous.  

Bourjois 10 hour sleep effect in Abricote Clair 71

This is my normal day-to-day foundation.  It is extremely light so doesn't cover all imperfections but I use a concealer underneath bits if I need to.  It blends in perfectly with my natural skin tone and in my opinion it is very natural and looks like I am hardly wearing foundation.  It also has amazing staying power despite it's light feeling formula.  Although the formula is lightweight, my face was slightly burnt on a recent hot holiday which meant that my go-to hot holiday foundation (flower perfection) was leaving my face too dry, I used this instead and it covered the slight redness from the burning and it also lasted on some pretty big nights out really well so I would definitely recommend this formula as it seems to be extremely versatile. It retails at about £9.99 and my current bottle (30ml) has lasted me almost five months of everyday use which is great value for money.

Bourjois Flower Perfection 51

This is the foundation I use for hot weather or heavy nights out when I don't have any dry skin or sunburn.  The formula has great coverage while being extremely long wearing and is based on a powder formulation which means that it prevents my face looking oily! It retails at £10.99 and contains 30ml which is good value as it lasts about 4-5 months I reckon!

MaxFactor Second Skin Foundation Creamy Ivory

I like this foundation I bought it because I like the Creamy Ivory Miracle Touch foundation but I actually think this shade ends up a bit light for my skin as you can see in the swatch.  Never make the mistake of assuming the foundations in a brand with the same name in a different product will match in colour.  I use this when I am at my palest in winter!  It is quite a thick formula and makes me look ghostly white so I don't actually use it too often. It retails at about £12.

MaxFactor Miracle Touch Warm Almond 45

This is just the shade up from the Creamy Ivory Miracle Touch foundation and I use it on the very rare occasion I actually manage to tan enough to need a darker shade in foundation.  I think I have owned this pot for about three years now which says a lot more about the lack of tanning I have done than the lasting power of this foundation i'm afraid.  On hot holidays I tend to drift between the colours lobster and ghost! Retails at £12.99.

The Fail Foundations

Avon Ideal Flawless Ivory

I was at one point an Avon representative and there are many of their products that I absolutely love! However, I absolutely hate this foundation colour on my skin I was never able to match my skin up to Avon foundations. Although, I have heard from many of my friends and happy customers that the foundations for darker/ethnic skin (which were formulated with Alesha Dixon in mind) are absolutely fantastic.  The reason this foundation does not suit me is because it has been created for people who have slightly pinker undertones to their skin.  It has extremely light coverage so that should also be taken into account. It retails for £12 and is normally on a 2 for £12 offer or similar so if it did suit your skin it would be pretty good value!

Maybelline SuperStay 24h Ivory 10

This foundation actually has extremely good coverage and markets itself as a super flexible, no transfer, long lasting product.  It definitely does live up to this claim although the colour I bought is again for people with pink undertones to their skin and therefore does not actually suit me at all! The only slight issue I think is that you probably need to set it with a quick sweep of face powder as i found that the thick formula made me feel like I really was wearing a mask. Retails at about £9.

Boots Natural Collection Colour Foundation in Porcelain

I have already done a whole review on this foundation that you can see by clicking here. However, in summary I think this is an awful product as it left my face patchy and the colour was very pink toned which is unsuitable for me anyway. I forgot to put a picture of this product here although the final swatch is of this foundation. Retails at £1.99.

How To Choose The Perfect Foundation!

I have compiled a list of steps that you should consider before choosing a foundation!

1. This is not really a step but is vital to looking for a new foundation.  Your arm/hand is rarely the exact same colour as your face, you would think it is but it almost never actually is.  

You can see on the swatches above that my arm is nothing like the colours I use on my face.  When buying a foundation always choose the colour you think is right and swatch is on your face before you buy it.

Then go outside into natural sunlight and check that it still looks right for you.  Often you will find that with a combination of using your arm to judge the colour and bad store lighting the colour won't be as you thought and remembering this will save you money in the long run.

2. This step is in my opinion also the most important.  You need to determine whether your skin has Yellow or Pink undertones to it.  The reason for this is that you want a foundation that will match these undertones.  If you choose a pink foundation and you have yellow skin it might look light enough for you but it will still not look quite right.  Choosing a shade with the wrong undertones will make you look drained and tired! Having said that working out the colour is is not quite as simple as it sounds as it took me a while to realise that I actually had yellow toned skin instead of pink toned!  You can see from my swatches that the ones that suit me on the left are slightly more yellow and the ones that do not and are on the right are slightly more pink.

What is very annoying is that almost all makeup companies differ in the terms they use when referring to their foundations.  Some will use the terms "warm/neutral/cool" instead and the simple fact is that once you understand your skin's undertones you can ask the person at the counter which section contains the right tones for you or judge just sample lots of them and judge the tone for yourself. Brands tend to lean towards certain colours as Bourjois tends to have foundations for people with yellow toned skin and Natural Collection/Maybelline tend to have colours for pink undertones.  MAC makes it simple as they have two ranges their NC  shades are for those with yellow undertones and the NW range is for those with pink undertones.  I work out as a shade NC15 which is almost the lightest yellow toned foundation.

 It is a good idea to consider at this point that if you fake tan your face/body it is best to stick to one brand and match your foundation to it as changing the brand you use to tan can change your skin tone enough to require a different toned foundation.  

This will help you work out what colour undertone your skin has....

- Look at your wrist, if the veins look more blue then you are yellow toned, if they seem more green you are pink/warm toned.  I found this test a bit confusing but this is the one that most people use to find out their tone.  As you can see in the photo below I have both!

- I think that the best way to find out what your skin tone is, is to find two objects, one that is a bright scarlet red, and one that is a  bright yellow.  This works best in natural sunlight, but if you hold these up to your face just think about which colour your skin is closest to. 

Here are some examples, 

This is my arm, I have put the handles of two pairs of scissors against it and you can see that my skin is closes to the yellow tone.

This is a  very closeup (and slightly blurry, sorry) photo of a swatch of a friend of mine's skin. It is clear from looking at this against the yellow and red handles that she has pink toned skin.

- Another way to find out what tone your skin is, is by using a digital photo of yourself (in sunlight, not artificial light or any reflections of colours) and increasing the saturation on a program such as windows live picture view or photoshop.  This will increase the saturation of your skin tone revealing what undertones you have in your skin more clearly.

(On windows live you click edit, view file (on the right of home), fine tune, adjust colour, increase saturation to the max it will go)

It will look something like this....

Yellow undertones

Pink undertones

3. You then need to decide what kind of foundation you require.  If you have dry skin you need to look for an oil based foundation and if you have oily skin you need to look for a powdery foundation that will prevent shine.  Most brands will have a whole range of foundations for each skin type.  I actually like to have a few foundations as I have combination skin which means it can be oily or dry depending on the weather or products I have used recently etc! I would recommend foundations such as MaxFactors Miracle Touch foundation for dry skin, Bourjois flower perfect foundation for very oily skin and Bourjois 10 hour sleep effect foundnation for combination skin.  

4. You also need to decide what level of coverage you want from your foundation.  If you have lots of skin imperfections you are going to want to have a thicker, more pigmented foundation than if you have naturally very clear skin and just want a foundation to even out the colour.  Again, it tends to indicate the level of coverage on the bottle so look out for that.  

Another option to consider if you have lots of skin imperfections but do not want to wear a heavy foundation is buying a matching concealer from the same range so you may want to look out for brands that do this.  MaxFactor, MAC, Bourjois etc all do them.

If you have quite blemished skin you might want to also use a foundation primer, this prepares your skin for the foundation and evens out the lines.  I am not a big fan of primers though as I think they make the foundation drift and can make skin worse in the long run so this is just a personal decision and you need to try them out and see what you like. 

5. The next step is a case of working out how dark your skin is in their foundation range. The best way to do this is to just try a few testers out and step out of the shop into sunlight and see which one suits you best.  You might want to take along a friend and get their opinion aswell.  I tend to put a blob of the foundation I am about to buy on the side of my cheek, blend it in and then go outside to make sure it matches the rest of my skin tone.  If it doesn't, just wipe it off with a tissue and try again.  Never buy a new foundation without testing it as it will probably be a waste of money or you will walk around with a strange coloured face till you use it up.

Hope that helps! 

Any questions feel free to ask below!