Lancome Make-up Blog

To create a perfect foundation, you first need to be an expert in…. your own skin!

Knowing your skin intensity and skin colour undertone assures the luminosity of face make-up, whereas disharmony of colours creates a grey, tired complexion with accentuated imperfections.

1) Follow our Make-Up Artists’ advice to discover your colour harmony!

Tips: Why not organize a little “colour meeting” with your best friends to determine each others tone?

- Sit down in front of a big mirror. The lighting shouldn’t be too bright but strong enough, so all the colours look real. The best is to do it under day light to better assess the colour.

- If your hair has been treated with colour – cover it with a white sheet.

- Remove all make-up from your face.

- Print our Make-up Artists’ colour pantone and put it very close from your skin

*If you skin better interacts and is in harmony with blue, rosy brown or a light rosy color, COOL shades and silver jewelry will make your skin look luminous and better enhance your complexion.

*If your skin better interacts and is in harmony with gold, reds tones, WARM shades and golden jewelry will make your skin look luminous and better enhance your complexion!

- As a complement, put the orange and mauve slides in your hand or by your face and choose the one that better enhances radiance and a healthy glow

Now that you are a colour specialist, how to adapt this new knowledge to your choice of foundation?

2) For a luminous and perfect complexion, find the right shade for your foundation: Our Make-up Artists’ 3 steps method

Step 1: Define your skin intensity: fair, medium, tanned or dark.

You can easily define it by putting the color chart by your skin (hand or face).

Step 2: Choose a foundation in harmony with your skin undertone and intensity.

Step 3: Look in the mirror: it is perfect!

3) The perfect foundation check list: Top 5 of the basic rules to remember

1- Always choose a shade that blends in well with your skin. Don’t try to change or alter your natural skin colour with your make-up foundation.

2- Choose a foundation shade slightly lighter than your natural tone to avoid a mask effect and to obtain a luminous complexion. (Remember that liquid foundation usually looks darker in the bottle than on the skin.)

3- On the contrary, for your concealer, a darker shade works better

4- Choose a foundation and a concealer from the same product line to make sure they match perfectly.

5- An obvious line between your foundation and your natural skin colour means that your foundation is the wrong colour. If you choose the right colour it will look as though it has disappeared into your skin.