I am awful at picking the right shade of foundation. It’s a skill I just can’t master. I have a collection of high street and high-end base products that are far too dark for my skin tone, which I paid a lot of money for at the time, sitting on my dressing table completely neglected. It doesn’t help that over eager sales women at beauty counters continually convince me that a certain shade is perfect for me, when in fact it’s just the artificial lighting in department store playing tricks with everybody’s eyes. So when I read about these Shade Adjusting Lightening Drops from The Body Shop I was unbelievably excited at the prospect of saving all my abandoned foundations.
The Lightening Drops were sold out online which was a pity, as The Body Shop always have far superior offers on their website than they do in their stores, so I was disappointed I couldn’t make good use of them. The drops come in a tiny glass bottle with a pipette applicator, which doesn’t seem to pick up much product at all. Mine just seems to blow out air and bubbles so it’s incredibly frustrating to get a decent amount of product from it.
Here are some of the main culprits in my makeup collection. Thankfully my Nars Sheer Glow in Mont Blanc and Loreal True Match in Rose Ivory aren’t too dark and are still usable, but the others? Well, I don’t know what I was thinking when I left the store with them! My biggest disappointment was my Estee Lauder Double Wear in 1N2 ECRU as I adore the formula and actually wore the foundation for months before I caught sight of myself in some pretty unflattering lighting and discovered I was leaving the house an orangy mess.
As you can probably tell from the swatch above it’s embarrassingly too dark for me. The Lightening Drops contain a concentration of white and pink pigments that help to neautralise yellowness whilst lightening liquid foundations. One drop is the equivalent of 1/2 a shade lighter; I used two drops to correct my epic Double Wear disaster.
Packaging and application a side, I am really impressed with this product. As you can tell, it’s had a dramatic effect on the shade of this foundation. Of course, adding any liquid to another will dilute it slightly but it had no effect on the finish or coverage of this particular foundation at all. This could be an absolute game changer for those with pale skin tones, I just wish they would improve the packaging so we get the most for our money.
The Body Shop Lightening Shade Adjusting Drops retail for £10/15ml and are also available in a ‘Darkening’ formula that is concentrated with red and black pigments for darker skin tones.
Do you have difficulty selecting the wrong base shades?
Have you tried the lightening drops or know of any similar products on the market?
