How to know which foundation colour from any brand best suits your skintone

These days, especially with the Aussie dollar going so strongly, I find myself doing more and more of my beauty shopping online. However, there is one thing that I find near impossible to buy online and that is foundation. Unless I have bought the brand before, I can never work out what colour I need. In fact, I can barely get it right even when I trial it in store. I find the names given to foundation shades to be useless - my skin isn't porcelain, or sand or beige - so I end up sticking to couple of tried and tested brands rather than trying new ones.

 Well, I have some awesome news for every person who has been too scared to buy a foundation online, a solution to your foundation woes. Findation.com is a website that will recommend foundation colours based on the colours of foundations you currently wear. From the website:

How does this work?

People like you, all over the world, tell us what foundation colors they use. We then use an algorithm (=fancy math stuff) to figure out what colors are similar, across different brands and products.

For best results:

• Only tell us colors that are a good match for your skin. Would you buy that same color again? If not, don’t enter it.
• Don’t guess, if you can’t remember exactly which color you used. Go check the packaging just to make sure!
• If you’ve worn two different shades in the same foundation before (e.g. one in summer and another in winter), just tell us the one that is the best match for your skin for most of the year.
• If you only tell us your matches in sheer coverage foundations or tinted moisturisers, we may not be able to give you a perfect match in a full coverage foundation.

I decided to give it a try. I have only found two foundations in which I have been really happy with the match - Napoleon Perdis Camera Finish in Look 1 and Lancôme Teint Idole Ultra 24H Foundation in 03 Beige Daphane (so my skin is beige after all!). I entered these into the website and it spat out 46 foundations that would be suitable, each one with a percentage indicating hw good the match is. Below is a couple of foundations it picked out for me.

This website is currently in Beta mode so what we all need to do is enter in as many foundations as we can that are great matches to our skin. The more people who enter colours, the more accurate the results will end up being.

This is an absolutely genius idea that I can't believe no one has thought of sooner. The founder of Findation.com is Kate Morris, who is also the founder of Adore Beauty. She obviously has had to deal with many frustrated customers who had been unable to work out which foundation colour to choose.

So, what you need to do now is to go to Findation.com and enter in all the foundation brands and colours that you wear. Not only will you get a selection of suitable suggestions to try, you will also be helping create one of the most valuable online beauty tools!


Once you have entere your shades, let me know what suggestions it has come up with you.


So, are you as excited about this as I am?