Foundation application - Beauty Blender, Paddle Brush, Flat Top Kabuki,and Fingers

What if I told you that how you apply your foundation is as important to how it looks on your face as the actual foundation you picked out?  Drugstore or high end, what you use to put it on your face can make it turn out like an airbrushed perfect canvas or like you put it on with a cement trowel.  The common misconception is that a foundation will look the same on the skin if you put it on with your fingers, a brush or a sponge.

So let's say that you've managed to pick the perfect color matched foundation for your skin, but when you apply it - it is cake face city and you look like a halloween mask, OR the foundation doesn't cover enough or looks patchy on the skin.  A little trial and error with different ways of application could turn a horrible foundation into a great match.

I will talk about four different ways of applying your foundation and the pros and cons of each.  Fingers, flat top kabuki style brush, paddle foundation brush and a Beauty Blender.  I won't be talking about the various Beauty Blender dupes in this post, that will be left for another day.

Most people start out applying foundation with their fingers, usually dotting it around their face and blending it into the skin with their fingertips.  This is the easiest method since it doesn't require any additional tools, but it's also the method I find is the most problematic when it comes to the result.  The most noticeable side effect is applying too much foundation to the skin (especially when working with liquid foundations), which you will see in cake-face and pigment pooling into the pores.  Most foundations look best when applied in very thin layers and built up only in areas where you need it most.  The exception to this rule seems to be with foundations that have a mousse texture such as Revlon's Colorstay Whipped or the Maybelline Instant Age Rewind The Lifter foundations.  Both seem to be best applied with fingers and worked into the skin in circular motions.  Using your fingers results in the heaviest coverage and may work best for people who are looking for really opaque foundation coverage.

The Beauty Blender sponge has a very unique texture, which results in an amazing natural looking airbrushed finish with liquid and creamy foundations.  You wet it first, and wring it out well - this causes the sponge to nearly double in size.  Using it damp will keep it from absorbing too much of your foundation and wasting it.  You can use it either by dipping the sponge directly into your foundation and bouncing the sponge against your skin to apply it OR by first dotting the foundation onto your skin and using the sponge blend it into the skin (using the same bouncing motions).  The only kind of foundation I've ever found that I did not LOVE using with my Beauty Blender are the mousse textured foundations.  This is my favorite method of application, hands down.  The coverage starts out relatively light, but you can build it up by adding additional thin layers of foundation,  allowing you to get maximum coverage without it looking cakey.

Wet / Dry

Flat top densely bristled brushes or "kabuki" style brushes are also very popular for foundation application.  Before I discovered the Beauty Blender, this was my preferred foundation tool.  Some have a completely flat top, others have a slight dome shaped top but styles work in very similar fashion.  When using this style of brush, after you dip it into the foundation (or have dotted the foundation on your skin) you can either stipple (tapping the brush over your skin) or swirl the foundation onto your skin.  You may find that swirling can leave visible brush strokes on your skin, so a combination of swirling then stippling away the brush strokes may work better for you.  The coverage that this style of brush gives tends to be less than using fingers but more than a Beauty Blender on the first pass.

Real Techniques, Sigma, and a Mineral Foundation brush

Densely packed bristles with mostly flat top

The last foundation tool I'll mention is also my least favorite to use.  The traditional paddle foundation brush is used to brush on the product in up and down strokes and you can also lightly press the brush into the skin as well.  This one leaves the most visible brush strokes, can also highlight the peach fuzz on your face if you have any.  I find that this style brush deposits too much product leaving your face looking distinctly cakey.

Paddle style foundation brushes:  EcoTools, Real Techniques, MAC knockoff

Side view - very flat brush

One way I thought would be a very good visual representation of how foundation would look going onto your skin using each method was to apply it to a blank sheet of paper.  You can see in the top left that the circle where I used my fingers is the most opaque.  This can translate into too thick a layer of foundation being applied to the skin which gives you that cake face effect.  If you use a flat top brush, stippling is the better application method over the buffing/swirling it into the skin.  The tapping motion of the stippling deposits it into tiny dots that mimics the air brushing spray of pigment onto the skin.  It ends up pretty natural looking without the brush stroke problems of the swirling method.  The up down strokes using the paddle brush is my most disliked application (aside from fingers).  The Beauty Blender manages to apply the thinnest amount of foundation in a layer to the skin, and building it up as much as you need in just the areas you need more coverage ends up with the best application of all the tools used.

Clockwise from Top Left: Fingers, Flat Top Kabuki (stippling), Paddle brush, Beauty Blender (bouncing), Flat Top Kabuki (swirling)

Hope this helps!