Review: Revlon Colorstay Foundation

This is one of those foundations that I've been trying on and off throughout the years. I know lots of girls love this and it gets hyped up soo much. But for me it just doesn't feel right and I choose other foundations over this one all the time. I have a lot of foundations, if you haven't noticed, I wear 3-4 different ones each week, I like variety, and different foundations serve different purposes to me, depending on what kind of coverage I want, my skin changing colour, if I need SPF or not and so on.

I have this foundation in two colours, Ivory and Buff, and that begins my first problem with this foundation, the colour match. Ivory to me is too pinky, ashy and white looking, while Buff is too "dirty" looking if that makes sense, it's yellow toned, but a dirty kind of yellow, which doesn't look quite right either. I suppose I should be mixing the two together cause I am in-between shades. If I wear the Ivory, I load up on bronzer and if I wear the Buff I feel like I am wearing the wrong colour and add a lighter powder on top. If I could get the right colour match, I think I would like this foundation much more.

The foundation smells really awful, eww when you open it the smell of paint overwhelms you, you can smell it right away and before it dries on your skin. It definitely makes you wonder what the heck is in this stuff that it smells so sickening. The smell bothers me, but I can get past it. Also there is no pump (as shown in pic above), which I loathe, but whatever, most drugstore foundations do not have pumps so I can get past that too.

This foundation dries fast, and does not blend well. I apply it either by using a flat top brush, or a dampened sponge (for lighter coverage). I do one side of my face at a time, and blend quickly.

Coverage and lasting power is the major positive of this foundation, it provides medium to full coverage. It gives a matte, flat finish. Just be careful, cause it can look cakey and mask-like if you apply too much. It lasts all day, and you do not need to touch up. It also comes in different skin types, you can get it in normal/dry, and oily/combination. I find the normal/dry works better for me, the formulation seems more watery. As you can tell in the pic above, the back of the bottle indicates that the combination/oily one controls oil, while the normal/dry one is moisture-balanced. It has an SPF too which is nice, normal/dry comes with SPF15, while the combo/oily only has SPF6, for whatever reason.

However, because it's so thick in coverage, I feel like it will do something terrible to my skin and I am always paranoid that I will wake up with cystic acne the next day. Most of all, this is NOT a foundation that I would wear often because it's so thick and it's hard to take off, you gotta really make sure you wash your face well and having dry skin, this irritates my skin. I can feel remnants of this foundation on my skin after I wash it. So this, for me, this is just a 'once in a while' foundation.

Do you like Revlon's Colorstay foundation?