How To Choose Your Perfect Foundation In 3 Easy Steps

Do you ever get overwhelmed at the thought of choosing a new foundation? 
Have you found yourself standing  in front of a wall of foundation bottles, all different colors and formulations and not known where to start?

Have you ever had buyer's remorse when you get home and find the pricey new bottle of foundation that you just bought doesn't look right?

Well rest easy - your perfect foundation is only 3 steps away!

How To Choose Your Perfect Foundation In 3 Easy Steps

STEP ONE

Know your skin type.
In order to get a flawless complexion you need to match your foundation to your skin type. If you have dry or maturing skin you need to avoid a matte finish or oil free foundation because it will make your skin look dry and old. Instead choose something more emollient and glowing such as a silicone based foundation.
If you have oily skin a glowy foundation can leave you looking far too juicy, so you may be better suited to a matte finish foundation.

STEP TWO

Choose your coverage.

image via makeupandbeauty.com

A word to the wise. Contrary to everything you see on the IG and You Tube your foundation should not look like a thick mask. It should be as sheer and lightweight as possible - it's job is to even you out a little and look like fresh glowing skin. Coverage should be based on what actually needs to be covered. Full coverage foundation is for skin that has extreme discoloration, scarring, melasma, etc. If you have perfect skin you need to look at a sheer coverage base, and if you fall in the middle you need to find a coverage in the middle. The key is to not go too thick or too opaque, and to always remember the goal is to create what looks like gorgeous skin.

STEP THREE

Choose the right undertone.
Either you are a warm toned girl or you are a cool toned girl.
No matter what they tell you on Instagram, cool toned girls need cool undertoned foundation, warm toned girls need foundation with warm undertones.
There are no exceptions.

A yellow or warm based foundation looks wrong on a cool skin. It leaves the complexion looking anything from flat to jaundiced.
A pink or cool based foundation makes a warm skin look ashy, grey and cold.

Lets break this down further, because so many people get this so wrong. Warm toned girls look more golden. Their skin ranges from yellow toned to golden honey tones, olives and deep sand tones. Warm toned girls typically tan really easily.

Jessica Alba has warm toned skin

Cool toned girls have ivory, pink and beige undertones. 

Bombshell Christina Hendricks has a cool skin tone

Still not sure? Try Charlotte Tilbury's Foundation Finder, a super simple way to figure it out!


If you get the undertone of your foundation wrong, your makeup will never look right.

If you're not sure if a foundation is cool or warm, hold the bottle against something that you know is. If you hold something pink next to the foundation you should be able to see that they either talk to each other or clash with each other.

You can't always trust the judgement of the person selling you the makeup. I recently had someone adamantly trying to tell me that a very yellow Makeup Forever stick foundation was the perfect shade for my cool skin tone. Not only could she not see that it looked completely crazy, but she told me the yellow base would cancel out the pink in my skin. Not so. It looked ridiculous!