Review: Revlon PhotoReady Makeup #001

I've been test driving Revlon PhotoReady for about a week now. After picking up, testing and returning #002, I finally found shade #001 and picked it up a few weeks ago. And even though I told myself that I wouldn't open up another foundation till I finished one, I cracked this one open anyway since I was dying to try it! And I'm glad I did. I actually really like this foundation.

I've already sang my praises of the packaging when I "tested" shade #002. The bottle is sturdy and the pump is a great addition! It does make a little noise when you actually pump it but I don't mind.

Shade #001 Ivory is a fairly good match for my skin. Here it is on my hand in natural overcast light. On the left of the swatch, it's rubbed in. I also didn't find that this shade (or bottle) had any shimmer particles in it like others have noted with the darker shades.

What I like about this foundation is that I can get medium to full coverage with just using my hands to apply. It also doesn't go on streaky. When you first apply it, it feels light and creamy. It does eventually set and after putting this on at 6am it was still there to take off around 9pm. That's pretty excellent wear time.

Now, for me, I really need to overdo it on the moisturizer in the morning. I can't say it looks great by 9pm. It tends to settle into dry areas if I don't moisturize well. Initially after application, if I don't moisturize, it quickly goes very dry and feels tight (like right now since I swatched on my face on unmoisturized skin - oops!).

I can't say whether this will or will not work on oily skin, but my guess is that it would perform fairly well on normal skin. On dry skin, the key is to moisturize very well and make sure you exfoliate any dry patches before application.

Does this cause breakouts? To be quite honest, I pretty much always have spots on my face, not of acne, but my dermatitis. The only thing that has actually worked in the past to clear that up has been going on a course of antibiotics for months. Well, since I'm not on antibiotics, I get things that resemble acne. But, after a week of testing this, I can safely say that I have not experienced any acne (though my face is still a mess).

Here it is on my skin. For reference, my skin is red and angry all around my mouth and on my cheeks too and this is just the foundation, no extra concealer! This is also swatched on unmoisturized skin, so I'm sure you can see that my skin looks a little dry (it is!). This is just to show the fairly good color match (also I think I forgot to put some near my nose so please disregard the crappy application job).

So, for $13.99 (and please don't pay full price - sale rotations mean you can probably get this for much less) I'd say I'm fairly pleased with this foundation. I can see this being a great summer foundation since it sticks around during the day. Since most (US) drugstores have excellent return policies, I'd recommend picking it up just to try.