The Quest for the best foundation of amazingness

For many years I like many other women have been on a quest. Yes. A quest. To call it anything else would demean the years of searching, the years of smearing various waaaaay too orange gunk on the back of my hand and the incredibly stupid amount of money i have spent. Yes finding the right foundation is something not to be taken lightly, if it was I would use a tinted moisturiser.

Let me do all the hard work for you and spare you the trauma and bitter disappointments i have experienced.

Let us begin.

Loreal True Match foundation (on average around £9.99)

Because your worth it? (for the price, hell yes!)

Now I was very dubious about this. Mostly as any product boasting the line

'super-blendable perfecting foundation MATCHES the colour and TEXTURE (?) of your skin'

is going to make me think:

1. Colour Match? i should be so lucky!

2. I don't want anything to mimic the texture of my skin EVER. I want to cover it up! damn you loreal!

In reality it is actually a very good foundation for the price tag and i find myself wearing it far more than any foundation i have bought from MAC, Chanel or any other high end brand.

The colour was very good for my pretty pale skin (W1 golden ivoy is my shade of preference)

I find it blends well over my moisturiser and gives excellent coverage. I had many compliments on how flawless my skin was when i wore this.

I would be so so careful when using this. I was very shocked at how runny the consistency is. I have lost count the number of times i have had to wipe huge amounts of excessive amounts of foundation off my hands. The bottle does have a nice little pump, to be honest if it didn't i think ease of application would diminish into 'arrrrgh' territory. Iwould definitely recommend application with a foundation brush for a very nice airbrushed look.

The lasting power is very surprising, come bed time (the few times i have actually bothered to remove my make-up) i found i still had a substantial amount on my face. As someone who recently went through a snobby 'cheap foundation is lame phase' I found myself very pleasantly surprised.In addition to this i found the foundation had a good finish. Matte but not 'oh my god i look like a crazed mannequin' good matte, which kept my nose shine free until lunch time (a rare feat).

One thing which really really bugs me about this and other loreal foundations, is that there appears to be no consistency in shades across any of there ranges. For instance i was so impressed by my true match, that i thought i would try Loreals infallible 16 hour foundation. However i couldn't find any shade that matched my true match shade, all of the shade names were different within this range. Which as you can imagine was quite frustrating. Eventually i had to settle for either a shade which was too pale or one which was too dark, which isn't a choice you want to be presented with really.

THE GOOD

• Easy to apply
• good staying power for the price
• nice finish
• doesn't feel too heavy
• good medium coverage
• a little will get you a long way.

THE BAD

• The consistency is quite runny (use sparingly!)
• didnt make me break out
• reduced shine (if you don't have very oily skin, i imagine this would be longer lasting than my experience)
• If you suffer from dry skin i would use with caution

THE UGLY

• The range of shades are shameful to be honest
• don't expect to be able to find the same shade in another loreal foundation (why loreal? whhhhhhy?)