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!

How To Choose The Right Foundation In 4 Simple Steps

As a makeup artist I get asked all the time which foundations I like best, how to make foundation last all day, how to choose the right foundation.

Walk into any department store / Sephora / makeup emporium and the list of options can be overwhelming. 
Half the time the people charged with helping you make the choice are so overly made-up they look like caricatures of themselves, which hardly inspires confidence. If you look to you tube and Instagram you will find the "beauty experts" favor obliterating any concept of skin by slamming so much makeup on the face it almost looks plastic.
And maybe you just want to look like a pretty, normal, lovely girl.

you use the same 4 steps to choose your model's foundation for a shoot
as you do for yourself for everyday wear.

Whether I'm getting a model or a movie star ready for a shoot, or whether I'm just shopping for myself, here are the criteria I look for when choosing a foundation:

1. What finish do you need?

What type of skin do you have? If you are oily you will want a slightly more matte finish or a water based foundation to offset some of the shine you are battling.
If you have dry skin you need a foundation with a glowing, dewey finish to make the skin look luminous.

2. How much coverage do you really need?

Rather than hijacking the face and holding your skin hostage, foundation is supposed to create the illusion of a beautiful, radiant complexion.
If your skin is clear you only need a sheer cover foundation. If you have scarring, uneven skin tone, blemishes that need disappearing then you should opt for a more full cover foundation. If your skin falls somewhere in the middle, you need coverage that falls somewhere in the middle.
The worst thing you can do is overload the skin with a foundation that is far too heavy. Instead make creating lovely looking skin your goal.

3. What is your undertone?

Basically foundations come in two color groupings. There are cool toned foundations, which cover ivory, porcelain and pinky undertoned skins, and then there are your warm tones for girls with a yellow or olive undertone.
If you have a cool toned skin and wear a yellow based foundation it will look awful. The same applies to a warm toned girl wearing a pink based foundation.

4. Find your shade

Rather than testing your color on some remote corner of your jawline, test it somewhere where you can clearly see whats going on, such as your forehead or the front of your cheek.
You should be the same color from your hairline to your chest, and your face shouldn't be any darker or any lighter than the rest of your upper body.