A new favorite foundation

Makeup mavens, listen up! I’ve found the most amazing foundation and from the drugstore, no less! I’m a self-proclaimed high-end foundation snob who typically gets her foundation from Bobbi Brown or Laura Mercier counters at Nordstrom, so if I’m jazzed about a drugstore foundation then it must be good.

Revlon PhotoReady foundation

One of my feet-on-the-couch, need-some-girl-time guilty pleasures is watching beauty videos/tutorials on YouTube. Really, I could waste SO much time watching people review their latest makeup finds or creating cool eye looks. One of my favorite YouTubers is Emily from Beauty Vlogcast; she’s a news anchorwoman in real life and makes makeup videos in her spare time and I love them all. I’d heard her mention the Revlon PhotoReady liquid foundation in a couple of videos and wondered if I should check it out. And man am I glad I did. Ulta happened to be having a 40% off Revlon sale when I was there so I picked up both the foundation and the Revlon color-correcting primer.

One of my main beefs with drugstore foundation (besides quality—sad but true) is the lack of testability. It’s difficult to pick your correct shade when you can’t open a bottle to test it on your hand or your face. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a shade that’s too light, too rosy, too dark, too SOMETHING. But I got pretty darn close with my Revlon purchase by doing the following:

• I brought my current foundation for comparison: a conveniently small-sized Bobbi Brown foundation stick. I’m sure I looked silly holding up my foundation stick to several bottles but hey, it got the job done.

• Find the windows! Obviously you can’t do this in every drugstore but natural light is a much better indicator of what a foundation actually looks like than those horrendous fluorescent lights. I just grabbed a couple of Revlon bottles and took them over to the window to see how the foundation stick compared to them in real lighting.

I’ve only used the foundation in concert with the primer so I can’t vouch for it on its own, but the two together are a wonderful combo. I don’t know how well the primer actually does at color correcting, but it makes my face feel baby-smooth and prepped for foundation. The foundation is relatively lightweight, dries to a smooth matte finish, and doesn’t budge. I went for a four-mile run and then lifted weights for 45 minutes at the gym yesterday and my face still looked airbrushed. I was IMPRESSED.

Revlon PhotoReady foundation goes for $12.99 at Ulta but you can easily find sales or coupons! I’m always getting Ulta mailers with coupons for $3.50 off a $10.00 purchase.