Comparisons of Foundations
I am a makeup girl truth be told. Does this mean I don’t love myself without makeup? Definitely not. But I truly feel more put together with the addition of a couple makeup products. To me it’s not much different than going out in public naked (okay, it’s a little different, but I’m trying to make a point). My point being, I love my body–faults & all, but I prefer to be seen with it covered. Just as I prefer to wear makeup most days. Foundation is definitely an item that can really make or break someone’s look. If the foundation doesn’t blend in well, is flaky or just the wrong color, then a person’s face can appear unnatural.
Thus when Raul E. New York approached me to sample some of their mineral based makeup, I thought it’d be a good chance to do a comparison of foundations. I’d tried a mineral powder foundation in the past, but really did not like the results on my skin. However Raul’s foundation is a liquid. Since I’m very familiar with liquid foundations and use the same products in other brands, I thought this would be appropos. There’s also a special offer below if you’re interested.
Mineral Makeup
Have you read about mineral makeup before? There’s a great article by SheKnows that I’ll link to here regarding the benefits of mineral makeup. Sure, the post is from 2008, but I figure the information is still the same. I also found a great pros and cons article on mineral makeup from WebMD here. Basically mineral makeup is meant to be more natural with less additives, thus better for our skin. Truth be told though, the Raul E. New York foundation does have other ingredients in it to make it liquid and to include sunscreen.
Onto the Comparison
I thought it only fair to compare this foundation to similarly priced non mineral foundations. Luckily I had 2 already in my possession. These are the ones I have used regularly along with a drugstore brand that gets some usage too (I didn’t include that one in this testing). Being the biology based person that I am, I decided to wear the Raul E. New York foundation on the left half of my face and the other ones on the right half of my face on different days. Some other data is I always use a foundation brush, I took the pictures in the same mirror and tried to do it about the same time of day (about half way through). I also tried to go light on other makeup and I purposely left off the lipstick. Here’s the results:
In both pictures above, I have the Raul E. New York foundation (Porcelain) on the left half of my face and the Lancome (Porcelain 40C) foundation on the right half.
In the pictures above, I have the Raul E. New York Foundation (Porcelain) on the left side of my face and the Laura Mercier (Porcelain) foundation on the right side.
Conclusions:
Let’s talk about the pictures. Obviously I couldn’t get the lighting exactly the same in all the pictures (although I tried very hard). If the coloring looks different, it’s not the foundations, it’s the camera, lighting and my inability to even things out perfectly. But what (I hope) you can see from these pictures, is the fact that you don’t see a difference from one side of my face to the other. Both foundations that I wore these days blended in nicely and didn’t flake or look splotchy. In fact at the end of the day, I would ask my husband which side looked better, and it was basically a tie. There really was no difference between these 3 foundations.
Let me also address the subject of the foundation primer. I only have one in my possession right now and it is Laura Mercier primer. After my post about comparing makeup for the face (here), I really don’t use it on a regular basis. Maybe it’s just my skin, or how I perceive it, but I have a hard time telling a difference when I use it or not. But I wanted to see if the Raul E. New York foundation would wear any different with or without my primer.
The last information I should include, in case you’re interested, is the shades or colors of these foundations. My complexion is quite fair (I know these pictures somehow make me look tan, but I’m not and I don’t use a tanner at all). In fact, my skin is fairly see through (my step dad used to call me “road map” because you could see my veins so easily). And the funny thing is that for all three brands, the same name pops up—porcelain.
Of course, since everyone’s skin is distinct, and your environment can make a difference, I’m not here to say one foundation is better than another. But if you’re looking for an alternative to what you are using now, I might suggest giving Raul E. New York makeup a try. Naturally the company has even extended an offer to my readers: a free gift of a Raul E New York Mineral Matte Shadow (any color choice while supplies last) with the purchase of the mineral liquid foundation. Use code: ThanksJodie at checkout (this is a $24 value—now that’s my idea of a nice freebie!!).
This week for our styling project we’ll be showing each of us in a maxi skirt!!
