You Need 4 Products for Complexion
Yep, that is right. With all of the excess we have shoved at us, the truth is that you only need a few well-intentioned things for an easy, successful complexion.
Yes, I see them. The people traveling with a tiny suitcase and a gigantic makeup bag. I always wonder…what do they have in there? I imagined it is full of skin care and prep, rollers and slimy snail masks (ewww), sprays, potions, creams, beauty drops and so on. Then you get to the makeup: primers, foundations, concealers, correctors, highlighter, contour, bronzer, setting powders, finishing powders…and that is just for complexion work.
It is exhausting.
We are constantly told that we need more and it is simply not true. We don’t need a gob of products, we just need the right ones. We need high-performance products that are the right texture and the right color.
NOTE: I’m going to talk about what we need for complexion in this post. If you want to know more about skin prep, skin type, foundation types and textures, please look at my previous posts. Cool?
Four Products for Complexion
You need 4 things.
When I talk about complexion I’m referring to our foundation products, the things we use to create a more smooth, perfect skin. Eyes, cheeks and lips are separate. We are just talking about the makeup we put on our skin to perfect the skin.
#1-#2: You Need 2 Colors of Foundation
Yep, you need 2 colors. Color #1 should match the skin in the apple/cheek area. This is usually lighter than the rest of the face and also an area where we tend to add highlight. It is so much easier to get that highlight when the skin in this area is matched well. A foundation that matches the jaw will deepen the center of the face (typically) and then trying to lighten it takes more makeup and more work.
Color #2 needs to match your jawline and/or your chest. Pay attention to the difference in depth between your chest and center of face. Usually it is 1-2 shades different. Some people are 3-4. It is important that your face doesn’t look separate from your body, so having the darker color helps keep the makeup looking natural and real.
How to find your depth? I have just created and released a tool just for that! It is called Brown Scale and can be used to see how light or dark something is in skintone and neutral. Pretty cool.
