The Summer Foundation Smackdown

L-R: L'Oreal True Match, L'Oreal Infallible Total Cover, CYO Lifeproof

Welcome ladies and gentleman, boys and girls to the Summer Foundation Smackdown! Where I explore three foundations to see how they hold up in this unbearable heat. Hint: It's not well!

Since the end of May we’ve been experiencing a monster heat wave here in the UK, it seems to have passed now, thank God!  But it transformed me, a functioning human, into a sweaty, barely functioning oil slick. Which means that my foundation wasn’t sticking around very long at all. So over the past couple of weeks I made it my mission to try out a bunch of foundations to see if there was anything that could last on my sweaty, sweaty face. It turns out there wasn't but let's talk about the results.

(Disclaimer: to be fair to all the foundations I tested them for the same amount of time, three days, and used powder and setting spray to give them all a fighting chance)

L'Oreal Infallible Total Cover Foundation in Natural Rose 

In third place, and possibly my least favourite foundation ever, is L'Oreal's Infallible Total Cover Foundation. I found this foundation really disappointing. For something that claims to offer longwearing, ‘infallible’ coverage - it claims to cover tattoos, just fyi - it isn't very covering and it doesn't last very long either. For me, and I appreciate everyone has different skin types and opinions, it just didn't deliver. I also found that it doesn’t apply very well at all, the mousse-y, cream-to-powder texture just sits oddly on the skin without absorbing. It also wasn't sweat proof as I'd sweat it almost completely off within a couple of hours. So overall, I really wasn't impressed. Luckily my sister quite likes this stuff, I don't know why but again we're all different, so I'll pass it on to her.

CYO Longlasting Foundation Lifeproof in 103

Now this I really liked. I hadn't heard much about CYO other than it had replaced Seventeen as Boots in-house brand, so I didn't really know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. Providing medium natural-looking coverage, Lifeproof has a very light texture that can be built up to something with much higher coverage whilst still looking very skin-like. It also applies really nicely and stays in place well, despite how much I was sweating, which was a lot, I can't stress this enough.

L'Oreal Paris True Match Liquid Foundation in Vanilla

And in first place, L’Oreal completely redeems itself with True Match which, despite being one of my all time favourites, I hadn't used in about 2 years and had totally forgotten about how good it is. It's good skin in a bottle even on the sweatiest days. It offers medium to high coverage, has a light buildable formula and almost mimics the skin so it looks completely natural on. It also stays put really well, despite my sweaty, sweaty face. It was a clear winner, being the only one to still be on past lunchtime.

What are your favourite summertime foundations?