love this foundation. It's super light on skin, not aware of it at all. Settles well and leaves my skin feeling wonderful. In love with this foundation, well worth the splurge

Shiseido

Revitalessence Skin Glow Foundation

I always wanted to try this but was scared to purchase with warnings of it being heavily fragranced. I finally broke down and ordered it during a sale because the shade #21 (light beige) with the grey tone has been touted for matching olive skin. I also ordered shade #20 (neutral beige) and this one has more of a fragrance than #21 from what I could tell. Either shade works, blending out in a forgiving manner. I do recommend using a damp sponge to sheer it out as a little goes a long way and the coverage is impressive. Using fingers or a brush give a heavier makeup look to it and I prefer a natural skin-like finish which is what I get with a sponge. It does a good job of covering redness and sun damage, wears well all day long and feels weightless (if using a damp sponge). An important note to mention is that my skin is dry and I have to prep it well with a moisturizing base, adding a facial oil else it can be drying on my skin. Sheering it out and prepping my skin results in no settling in fine lines or pores, just evened out skin tone. Once it sets it doesn't transfer and lasts all day.

Kosas brand-wide has been good for my reactive skin and the Brow Pop is no exception. The 'nano' tip is genuinely fine — finer than the Anastasia Brow Wiz which I'd previously been using — which means I can mimic individual brow hairs rather than drawing in a stripe. Wearing Medium Brown which has neutral undertones and works on my brunette brows. The formula doesn't smear on combination skin and survived a humid Atlanta afternoon without re-application. The actual pencil is short which is my main complaint — for the price I want a longer barrel — but the application quality genuinely beats anything else I've tried at the price point. Brow gel still required for hold but for shape and feathering this is the one.

I've been a Clinique Even Better Clinical loyalist for years but I picked this up out of curiosity — drugstore, marketed for mature skin, half the price. Three weeks in and I'm genuinely impressed. The serum-foundation hybrid texture is light enough not to settle into my fine lines (this is the test I run on every foundation and most fail) and the finish is a believable skin-like radiance rather than dewy or matte. I'm in the lightest cool shade, 110 Ivory Rose, which actually skews neutral on me — I'd say it suits NW10 to NW15 skin without going chalky. Coverage is sheer-to-medium which for daily wear is what I want. Won't replace the Clinique for events but for everyday this is a solid budget pick for 40s+ skin.

Cult product, deserves the cult. Oily lids and any pretty eye look used to be incompatible — by lunchtime everything had migrated into the crease and I was redoing it in the bathroom. The Original Primer Potion fixed that. A genuine grain-of-rice amount blended into the lid before shadow, two minutes to dry, and the eye look I put on at 8am is recognisably the same one at 11pm. The mini is the right call to start — a full size lasts me ages and I've heard the formula can dry out, so smaller portions actually make more sense unless you do dramatic eyes daily. The squeezy tube on the mini is also way easier than the original wand bottle.

Danessa's brand has been on my list for ages and Vision is the one that finally got me to commit. The shade range is doing what most foundations don't — actual olive options without the warm-orange swing or the cool-pink mismatch. I'm in the deeper olive shades and it doesn't oxidise on me, which after years of foundation oxidation testing is a sentence I rarely get to write. Coverage is genuinely adjustable — one layer is a sheer-medium, building gives full without going cakey. Houston-summer test pending but day-to-day in spring it's holding well on my combination-oily skin with a light powder set. Pricey but a small amount goes a long way.

Genuinely impressed with this. The doe foot applies cleanly, the colour is buildable rather than terrifyingly pigmented out the gate (looking at every other liquid blush I've tried), and it sets to a satin finish that doesn't read greasy on combination skin. I've been wearing the I Choose You shade and it gives a flushed-from-school-run look that's hard to fake. Lasts the whole working day without fading much. The only fiddle is you have to blend within about 10 seconds — once it grabs, that's where it's staying. Tap don't drag. For under a tenner I'd put it next to formulas costing three times as much.

I'm not a highlighter person and this got me. The gel formula sits as a wet-look sheen on the high points without the chunky shimmer that ages everything on my oily skin. I've been using Glowy in the mid shade and the way it catches Brooklyn afternoon light is unreasonable for the effort involved (one fingertip dot per cheek, tap, done). Tried mixing it into my foundation for an all-over glow — also gorgeous, just don't go heavy if you have oily skin or it slides. The new shade extension has more options now too which I'm tempted by. About to buy a backup before they reformulate or discontinue it because that's just my luck with products I love.