Foundation & Base: How To Select A Color To Match Your Skintone

Selecting a Foundation to Match Your Natural Skintone…  

Your natural skintone can best be seen in natural daylight, and you can show off your unique skintone with a perfectly-matched foundation.  It is important to remember that the purpose of a foundation is to simply ‘even out' the facial skintone.  Similar to an artist preparing a canvas for painting, a foundation will provide a smooth, even ‘base' for your eye, lip and cheek colors.  A foundation will also conceal any patchy areas of uneven skintone.  A well-matched foundation will allow you to better showcase your facial features by adding color through lip, eye and cheek tones.  Below are some tips for selecting foundation, concealer and loose powder.   
  
To provide a smooth canvas for lip, eye and cheek colors, a foundation that is perfectly-matched to your natural skin color is essential.  The purpose of a perfectly-matched foundation is to simply ‘even out' the facial skintone, not to add color to the face.  A perfectly-matched foundation color will match your neck as well, so that there is no tonal difference between the face and neck (no mismatched colors at the jawline and no applying foundation to the neck).   You can also use a creamy, opaque concealer to cover any dark undereye circles.  Undereye circles are very unflattering in photos and can make the eyes appear ‘tired', so if you have any dark shadows under your eyes, do use an opaque concealer to camouflage them.  Concealer can also be dotted carefully onto any untimely breakouts.  Seal both foundation and concealer with a loose powder (applied with a soft large powder brush) for a smooth, matte finish.  Important:  Do ensure that these three items - foundation, concealer and loose powder - are a perfect match to your skintone (no pinkish or peach-toned loose powders applied on top of your carefully-matched foundation shade!).  Avoid using heavy-looking foundation on younger skins; a powder foundation, sometimes called a ‘dual finish', provides a lightweight coverage, will ‘even out' the skintone and is age-appropriate.  Be cautious if the skin is acne-prone - a powder foundation or an oil-free liquid foundation works best for acne-prone skins (do not add an oily, moisturizing foundation product to oily skin, it can cause breakouts).  Other types of foundations include liquids and creams.  Liquid foundations are also popular, fairly lightweight and easy to apply.  Cream foundations should be used only on very dry skin since they are typically designed to be a ‘moisturizing' foundation.  SELECTING A FOUNDATION SHADE:  To select a foundation shade that is an exact match to your skin, use natural (outdoor) light and a mirror.  Stripe several different sample shades from your jawline down onto your neck.  Look in the mirror while in outdoor light.  The shade that disappears onto your neck is the shade you want.  Your foundation shade can now be used as a guideline color to carefully select a matching concealer and loose powder.  Using natural (outdoor) lighting for this process ensures there are no hidden undertones (pink, orange or red) in your foundations, concealers and powders.  Please note: indoor lighting can hide undertones and distort some colors during the critical shade selection process, so for best results use outdoor light to make your tonal decisions for foundation, concealer and powder.

After you've found your perfect foundation, concealer and powder, now you can add color to your face and define your features with your makeup colors!  it is recommended to use high-pigment powder eye shadows, eye liners, powder blushers, lip liners and lip glosses for longest-lasting results.  Highly-pigmented makeup tones will also show up most beautifully in photos, videos and on stage.