A lot of us have fallen victim to lousy sales assistants or bad judgment, or (what I'm personally guilty of) online shopping - and gotten the wrong foundation colour. More likely than not, those perfectly good foundations are sitting at the bottom of a beauty cupboard or drawer somewhere, gathering dust.

I've found a method that not only corrects this foundation colour to suit your skin tone, it also gives your skin a lovely glow and does not require the further purchase of another foundation! Meet my new glowy-skin combo:

I received the Benefit Hello Flawless foundation to review a little while back, and while it was beautiful and glowy, it was also a tad too light for my skin tone. Top that off with a move to sunny Malaysia and a holiday to even-sunnier Boracay, and you have a foundation that does not work on my skin. To illustrate:


On the left half of my face I have applied the foundation, and as you can see, it looks a little chalky and I look kind of sick. There is no dimension or life to my face at all, as tends to happen when one applies a foundation that is a couple of shades too light for their skin.

I came upon this method completely by chance, because a while back, I'd purchased a highlighter from Becca (their cult-favourite Shimmering Skin Perfector) in a shade too dark for my skin, upon the recommendation of someone who, in hindsight, didn't have a clue what she was going on about. Anyway, this liquid highlighter was a beautiful dark bronze colour, but I couldn't wear it at all because it didn't do anything to highlight my skin. I tried mixing it in with my usual foundations, but I found that they made me look a little muddy and dirty. That's when I came up with the idea of mixing it into a foundation that was a lighter colour than my skin, to see what the result was. Here are a couple of swatches on my hand to show you what became of my little experiment:




As you can see, the foundation definitely darkened a little with the addition of the Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector. All that was left was to try it on my skin:


I mixed equal parts of the Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector and the Benefit Hello Flawless, and applied it to my skin. My skin looked much more dimensional, more glowy, and very much more healthy.

The benefits of mixing in a bronzed shimmer as opposed to a darker foundation colour?

The foundation was sheered out by the Becca SSP, so my skin looked much more natural. The shimmer also helped to highlight my face and give the illusion of more vibrant, glowing skin. The shimmer also reflected the light really well, which meant my unsightly bumps and small flaws were well hidden.

However, I wouldn't recommend this method for people with acne and acne scars, as well as pigmentation, because the foundation was quite sheer and didn't cover my acne scars. I am quite patient with makeup and will spend the time spot concealing when I have time to spare, but if you're a slap-and-dash kind of person then I would recommend finding the right colour, medium coverage foundation to do the job.

I hope you found this post helpful! x