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"Confession: I&amp;#39;ve been writing about beauty for years and yet I couldn&amp;#39;t point to my foundation shade on a wall if you paid me. I&amp;#39;m also useless to my foundation-seeking friends, from the palest to the darkest, who&amp;#39;ve asked for my help. After a few tentative swipes on their hands, it&amp;#39;s clear to everyone that I don&amp;#39;t know what I&amp;#39;m doing.\nThe shame, I know. But I also know I&amp;#39;m not alone in my confusion either. Deciding on a foundation formula is one thing&amp;#8212;just pick from sheer, medium, or full coverage&amp;#8212;but shade selection is a whole other process. What looks like a good match in the bottle often shows up completely different on your skin, and after a few disappointments, it seems easier to skip it entirely. But since foundation is one of the best makeup inventions of all time, I decided it was finally time to seek expert help.\nAnd so I did, visiting five beauty boutiques and counters in NYC; including the Make Up for Ever Pro Studio, the MAC Makeup Studio, the Est\u00E9e Lauder counter at Saks Fifth Avenue; and Sephora and Ulta in Maywood, New Jersey. My mission: to make sense of the ins and outs of foundation shades and perhaps pick up a few extra credit tips.\nHere, then, are my lessons learned.\nPinterestFacebookMy starting point: Me, without foundation on. I&amp;#39;m doing this all for you guys.1. You should test several shades, ideally on the lower part of your cheek. And it&amp;#39;s always best to test them in natural light. Everywhere I went, I was asked for my preferred foundation formula. Hearing that I&amp;#39;m a tinted moisturizer fiend who applies her makeup while walking from room to room helped the experts hone in on formulas with light-to-medium coverage. And that&amp;#39;s when the consultation really began. After assessing my makeup-free skin, each expert swiped three shade options from that type of formula onto my lower cheek toward my jawline. Interestingly, everyone had a slightly different way of determining my shade. At MAC, for instance, my artist referred to the crook of my neck, while everywhere else, they took my entire face into consideration. Once we identified my &amp;quot;overtone,&amp;quot; or the intensity of my pigment, we moved onto my &amp;quot;undertone,&amp;quot; or the shade that was peeking through. At that point, we studied the options in a handheld mirror and decided which seemed the most natural on me. If we couldn&amp;#39;t agree, we&amp;#39;d walk to the window&amp;#8212;or in the case of the Make Up for Ever studio, to a light source that mimicked daylight&amp;#8212;for a second check. I usually tested two out of the three options on my full face. The differences were subtle, but it was clear which ones actually melted into my skin when compared.\n2. It&amp;#39;s shockingly easy to misidentify your real skin tone. It turns out that my skin&amp;#8212;universally deemed a &amp;quot;medium tone with golden undertones&amp;quot;&amp;#8212;is much lighter than I thought it was. As such, whenever the light, medium, and dark options were striped along my jawline, I immediately wanted to try the darkest option. Can&amp;#39;t it just be blended on my skin, I&amp;#39;d ask? The (super) polite artists explained that foundation should disappear into your skin. &amp;quot;You can always warm up your complexion with bronzer and blush,&amp;quot; said my Ulta beauty adviser, Ileen Miranda. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#39;s hard to lighten up your skin after the fact.&amp;quot; Noted.\nPinterestFacebookHere&amp;#39;s a look at the five different foundations they matched me with, from left to right (shot on my hand so it&amp;#39;s easier to see the difference): MAC Studio Waterweight SPF 30 Foundation in NC25 ($33); Marc Jacobs Beauty Genius Gel Foundation in 44 Golden Medium ($48); Make Up for Ever Ultra HD Invisible Cover Stick Foundation in Y315 ($43); Lanc\u00F4me Miracle Cushion in Bisque (360 N) ($47); Est\u00E9e Lauder Double Wear Makeup To Go Liquid Compact in Ivory Beige 3N1 ($45).\n3. Foundation doesn&amp;#39;t need to be applied all over your face. For years, I&amp;#39;ve been okay with wearing foundation only in the middle of my face. I felt sufficiently covered with just that amount. So when MAC makeup artist Ashley DiSarro explained that your forehead doesn&amp;#39;t always need foundation since it&amp;#39;s often darker and more even-toned than the rest of the face, I felt more than a little smug. It turns out that your chin and the area around your nose are more prone to redness, so you should cover that up first, before laying down more product. And speaking of redness, Sephora pro artist David Razzano explained that surface redness, which I have a lot of due to my seasonal allergies and my love of Retin-A, shouldn&amp;#39;t be confused with your actual skin tone.\n4. It&amp;#39;s worth taking the extra time to use a foundation-matching tool. Both Sephora and Est\u00E9e Lauder (at select counters) use technology to help customers narrow their shade selections down to a few options. How it works: the makeup artist presses a tool to a few spots on your face, such as your chin and forehead, and the system identifies your skin tone. That information then helps the consultant narrow down your best foundation shade. At the Est\u00E9e Lauder counter at Saks, consultant Mei Santos used the iMatch Digital Shade Finder to select my best match of its Double Wear Makeup to Go Liquid Compact. At Sephora, meanwhile, my Sephora + Pantone Color IQ reading helped Razzano and me narrow down my ideal brand and formula from a mind-boggling 1,500 different foundation options. Oh, and did I mention that both services are free?\n5. The brush you use can change the finish of the formula. I wasn&amp;#39;t surprised that none of the experts applied my foundation with their fingers&amp;#8212;too streaky, they said&amp;#8212;but I was intrigued by how some used synthetic and others used natural-bristled brushes. Turns out that the synthetic bristles on a traditional foundation brush deposit more product, leading to fuller coverage. Natural bristles, meanwhile, soak up some of the formula so the effect is sheerer. So by switching up the brush you can get two different looks. Just make sure you don&amp;#39;t accidentally make one of these major makeup brush mistakes.\nI walked away from my experiment with a new appreciation of makeup artistry. I&amp;#39;m also far more confident in my foundation-picking abilities. All in all though, if I had to pick a favorite I&amp;#39;d go with the Make Up for Ever Ultra HD Stick Foundation. Of all the options, the color matched my skin tone the closest, and as someone who&amp;#39;s worried about signs of aging (dark spots, ugh), I love that it offers heavier coverage.\nHere&amp;#39;s a final peek at how everything looked on. It&amp;#39;s pretty wild how different the swatches all looked before getting smoothed into my skin, no?\nPinterestFacebookPS: Not sure if foundation is right for you? Consult our guide to figuring out which face product (foundation, tinted moisturizer, BB cream, etc.) is best for your skin concerns!\nWatch How to Apply Foundation Flawlessly:\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/story/how-to-find-your-perfect-foundation-shade-foundation-matching>