A foundation light enough.

It's always a struggle to find a foundation that matches your skintone, but if you're on a budget and live in Belgium, things are even worse. Drugstores or brands seem to think we're all rather tan, since they don't sell their lightest shades here. But then MUA became available here too and there's foundation light enough for me in it's range: the Undress Your Skin Illuminating Foundation in the shade porcelain.

Packaging

It comes in a long narrow tube with a sticker on the front that indicates the shade. It looks nice and it's hygienic! There's 35ml of product in there, which is 5 more than the usual of 30ml for foundations.

Promises

It says:

Covers imperfections and blemishes whilst maintaining your skins natural glow with light-diffusing particles of shimmer that creates instant radiance.

Sounds perfect! Now let's see what's inside the tube!

Ingredients

The ingredients are:

Aqua, Cyclopentasiloxane, Ethylhexyl Stearate, Dimethicone, Ethylhexyl Palmitate, Quaternium-90 bentonite, Propylene Carbonate, Glycerin, Isododecane, Cetyl PEG/PPG-10/1 Dimethicone, Aluminum Starch Octenylsuccinate, Isodecyl Neopentanoate, Trimethylsiloxysilicate, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tocopheryl Acetate, BHA, Phenoxyethanol, Methylparaben, Ethylparaben, Propylparaben CI 77891, CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499

So it's a water and silicone based foundation, as I think most are. Aluminium starch Octenylsuccinate and BHA aren't the safest of ingredients and there are different kinds of parabens in there, which I'm not keen on.

Test
The foundation is quite runny when I put some on the back of my hand, but it was no problem once I dotted it on my face.
I does provide a good amount of coverage and as said before, it is light enough for me. It's even ever so slightly too light. I don't mind that tough, as I have some foundations in my drawer that are too dark that I can mix this one with.

The formulation isn't great for my skin. It dries rather fast and can look streaky and patchy, especially on my nose. It would probably work well for oily skin though. I cannot detect any light reflecting particles in there, nor do I see an illuminating effect. It's more mattifying than illuminating. Now that I've found a colour that works for my skin, the trick is to make it work for me. So I mix it with a drop of moisturiser or - like Wayne Goss  - almond oil, it changes the finish and makes it look good on my skin! That tick does sheer out the coverage slightly, but that's perfect as I prefer lighter coverage anyway.

Here you can see the foundation mixed with a bit of oil -left hand side - and on its own - right hand side.

So if you're struggling to find a budget foundation that doesn't make you look like an Oompa Loompa this may be a good one for you. Foundation is by far the hardest beauty product to get right, so I hope more brands will sell lighter shades too so there's more of a choice in formulations.
Sincerely,
R.