REVIEW: L'Oreal True Match Lumi

I had been wanting to check out L'Oreal's True Match Lumi since Kandee Johnson raved about it.   They advertise as "Lightweight buildable coverage that lasts up to 8 hours"  with a Luminous finish.

I popped into CVS with some ExtraBucks and brought home two shades, W3 and W4 both work pretty well on my skin tone and lean a bit more on the peach side than my skin is but it gave me a healthy glow that I rather liked.  My skin is an NC30 most days and somewhere between NC25 and NC30 during the winter months.  Right now I think I am closer to an NC25 than a 30.

Before: bare faced, sun damage, enlarged pores, fine lines

After: Imperfections nicely blurred, the color is a good match and the finish is lovely.

The consistency of the foundation is pretty watery, thankfully the pump allows for precise portion control when you apply it to your hand before blending it onto your face.  Kudo's there L'Oreal, for $13 I expect a pump these days (I'm looking at you Revlon Colorstay - you need to up your game)

I applied the Rimmel Fix and Perfect Pro Primer over my daily moisturizer, and waited about 5 minutes for the primer to set.  Applying the W3 to the center of my face, my nose, cheeks, chin and forehead with foundation brush, then blended that in with a dampened Beauty Blender.   I used W4 around the perimeter of my face, under my cheek bones down to my jawline and neck, and up along my temples and hairline.   I think that a darker variation in the two colors would have given more definition but I do like the W3/W4 combination for a really natural color.  I kept the rest of my makeup pretty minimal, a little bit of blush and bronzer and some eyeliner/mascara.  I did have a pretty big pimple on my nose that I concealed with the new TrueMatch concealer stick in W4-5 that I will review in a later post.

 True Match Lumi does a good job of blurring your imperfections but is not more than a medium coverage foundation after two coats.  You are not going to be covering up big zits or dark spots without the help of a good concealer.  You can still see some of my sun damage peeking thru on my cheeks and nose, but overall I really like the pretty glow it gives and it looks very natural on the skin.  I did not set this with either powder or a spray to really see how long it would last on my oily skin.  The luminous finish is pretty but I'm expecting it to melt right off my face in the span of a few hours.

You can see here the finish is luminous and glowing

After only about 3 hours the glow from the foundation and my own oily T zone were starting to make me really feel the need to blot.  The coverage had started to break down around my nose where you can start to see the redness as well as on the cheek area and the top of my nose where the blemish is.  By the 6 hour mark there was pretty much nothing left on my face in the T zone, and when I took a cleansing cloth to my skin, there was minimal foundation pigment left to wipe away.  This was my main disappointment with the product, and I had hoped the primer would have kept it from fading a bit longer.

After 4 hours, you can see the foundation fading on my T zone

This foundation would probably work really well for someone with normal/dry skin that doesn't need a ton of opaque coverage.  The packaging gets a plus for the pump bottle, but the wear time gets a minus for how fast I'd go through a bottle with the constant need to do touch ups.  The finish really is beautiful, and the blendable formula makes it very easy to work with.  The SPF 20 is always a plus in my book and I didn't have any issues with it settling into my enormous pores or fine lines.  Set with a powder and a finishing spray would probably prolong the wear of the foundation to 6-8 hours to cover a full work day with maybe a blot half way through.  My bottle will be going back to the store alas.

FINAL GRADE: B-