Too Faced Born This Way Matte Foundation is supposed to be an oil-free, waterproof foundation with a matte finish and undetectable coverage that comes in 35 shades and retails for $40. It is boldly implied to stay matte and control oil for 24 hours.
The product comes housed in a glass bottle with a pump, much like their original Born This Way Foundation, but with a taller and slimmer bottle.
I chose the shade Snow because that is the shade I use in the Born This Way Multi-Use Sculpting Concealer. The concealer does not match me perfectly but it’s close enough. I also use the shade Almond from time to time but it has a fairly obvious yellow undertone on me that I knew would not work for a foundation shade.
They got the shade match about as close as I think you can. I appreciate them not making the foundation darker than the concealer, which a lot of makeup brands will do, assuming most people use a lighter concealer than their foundation. I don’t do that because it emphasizes the sunken-in-ness of my under eye circles.
It’s really unfortunate that the shade doesn’t match me better because that does affect the review, making it harder for me to review the product impartially. A shade that is too light exaggerates areas of dryness on the skin and looks more obvious if the product settles into pores. It also does absolutely nothing to neutralize any redness in the skin.
This applied best with a damp sponge. Using a brush caused the product to sit on the skin in a way that looked unnatural and emphasized my pores. I found that the product set completely a few minutes after application and could no longer be blended. One of the times I wore this, I realized that I hadn’t fully blended an area in, but because it was already fully set, I couldn’t fix it without removing the makeup and starting over again.
Even though this sets down all the way, it doesn’t have a dried-down feel to it. It still has a sort of light tackiness to it. Because of that you may still want to powder over top depending what you want to wear on top of it.
I would describe the finish as natural matte. It’s definitely not a dry, flat matte. The coverage level I got was probably light-medium, but it’s hard to tell when the shade is too light. Freckles, dark spots, redness, acne scarring all 100% show through because of the shade. It did not help smooth the texture of skin. On my cheeks, it doesn’t emphasize the texture if I apply it with a sponge but it does seem to accentuate the pores on my forehead. It was also not forgiving on any areas with dry, flakey skin.
As for wear time, the few times I did wear it all day, it didn’t stay matte for very long. It got just as shiny as a hydrating foundation would. Keep in mind my skin is currently fairly oily as we are still in summertime. There is almost nothing that will control oil all day long for me.
I’m going to leave this review as is for now – more of a first impression review – since I haven’t worn this product too extensively. So far, I’m not super impressed but I also don’t hate it. I’ll probably end up trying it with different combinations of base products and if my opinion changes down the road, I’ll update the post later.