Happy Tuesday, everyone. And welcome to Review week! That’s right, this week we are doing back to back reviews of some highly requested products. First up, we have the newest(ish) foundation launch from Revlon. The Illuminance Skin Caring Foundation. I’ve seen some rave reviews for this one. And I’m pretty excited to talk about it.
REVLON ILLUMNANCE SKIN CARING FOUNDATION – $42.99 – chemistwarehouse.com.au
*16 Shades Available*
Packaging first, as always. The Illuminance Foundation is housed in a stout glass bottle with a mirrorised pump on top of the bottle. The bottle has grey and white detail on it. The bottle has quite a bit of heft to it. Which I have come to expect from Revlon. The Illuminance Foundation contains 30ml of product.
As I mentioned before, the Illuminance Foundation utilises a plastic pump to dispense the foundation out of. I do like this pump as it’s on the stiffer side. And I get a good amount of control out of it. Having said that, I have heard others say that the pump leaks out from the side. I’m yet to experience that. But it’s something to keep an eye out for.
The Illuminance Foundation has 28 shades in the line. Annoyingly though, only 16 of those shades are available in Australia. I did note that many of the missing shades are in the deeper shade range. And it’s genuinely disappointing when brands do this (this isn’t the first time that Revlon has skipped out on shades here in Australia). What makes it worse is that despite it only being 28 shades, those 28 shades are actually well balanced. With seven shades in each category and a good range of undertones available.
As for me, I wear shade 205 Natural Ochre. Described as being Light/Medium with Warm Yellow/Apricot Undertones. Match wise, this works really well for me. Maybe a little on the warm side. But I can pull it off nonetheless.
The Illuminance Foundation has some interesting and fun ingredients that I wanted to talk about. It contains 5% Plant Squalane and Hyaluronic Acid to help attract and boost hydration to the skin. It also contains antioxidants to help protect the skin from free radicals. It’s boldest claim, however, is that the formula is supposed to help reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles over continued wear. I always side eye claims like that. But go off, queen.
The Illuminance Foundation is one of the easier foundations that I’ve gotten to work with lately. I quite enjoyed the consistency of it. It was fluid, but it had some body to it. I could dot it around without it dripping everywhere. I could easily blend this out with a sponge, a brush, or my fingers. My preference, however was the sponge. Mostly out of convenience, but I did like the finish that it gave to my face.
Speaking of finish, the Illuminance Foundation is described as being a radiant finish with medium coverage. I wasn’t expecting the coverage to be so good with this foundation. But it covered up my dark spots and blemishes pretty easily. it also had a slight blurring effect too. Like, everything looked smoothed and evened out. I was extremely impressed with how my skin looked.
The wear test, however was interesting. As I had to do a lot of chopping and changing with my base routine to get the best possible wear out of it. I was initially using the Nyx Marshmallow Primer and the Rimmel Stay Matte powder. And I think that combo just didn’t work for this foundation. The primer was a little slippy, but the powder was so mattifying. And while it would always look fine at first, inevitably, it caused the foundation to break down after a few hours of wear.
After further experimentation, I ended up ditching the separate primer altogether and just used my sunscreen in its place (I’m currently using the one from Beautifltr). I also swapped the powder for the Kosas Cloud Bake. Focusing the powder only on the areas where I get oily (around nose/chin). And that ‘less is more approach’ worked much better for me. I got a full eight to ten hours of wear out of this foundation without the product breaking down. In fact, this combo made the foundation look better on my skin the longer I had it on. I actually got more compliments on my skin while testing this foundation than any other foundation that I’ve used recently. And for me, that’s saying something.
So, the Revlon Illuminance Foundation ultimately does get a recommendation out of me. I cannot in good conscious recommend you pay full price for it. But if you love a radiant base and you have mature, combo skin, this is well worth a look. Have you tried the Revlon Illuminance Foundation? Let me know in the comments.
Cheers and love
Emily xo