Lancome Teint Miracle Foundation Swatches

Lancome has released a new foundation that claims to reproduce the look of real skin. I'm skeptical, since my personal belief is that nothing ever looks quite like real skin, but Lancome ascribes these skin-lookalike properties to what it calls Aura-inside technology. While I personally view the whole thing as marketing hype, the line of foundations is actually quite good.

The foundations come in a pump bottle, which make them quite hygenic and easy to use, and have a very fluid, light texture, not unlike water. Coverage is decent, but still relatively light - if you want serious coverage, this isn't going to provide it.

In Singapore, as with the rest of Asia, Lancome seems to think that we have a limited gene pool, so we only have a few colours. So swatched here are the "Asian colours" as determined by Lancome. There are 6 shades in total, so hopefully there is enough choice within the limited range. I'm not too sure what shades these match up to, since it appears that Lancome has named the shades slightly differently in Asia (using BO, O, PO) as compared to the US (where they use Bisque, Buff, etc).



L-R: BO-01, BO-02, O-04, PO-03, PO-045, O-03

I know the swatch photograph isn't that great - I actually took it in very dim indoors lighting at an event, and even after image editing for colour accuracy, this was the best I could do. Hopefully the descriptions below will help a little more.

BO-01 is a very pale beige that leans a little yellow. I'm NC20, and I think this would be too pale for me.

BO-02 might possibly be my shade. It's darker than BO-01, and a little more yellow. Maybe with some careful blending this might be around NC20.

O-04 is quite dark and orange. It's possibly NC35 or so (I'm not that familiar with MAC's darker shades). I kind of wonder who would need a foundation shade that orange though, but there are a gazillion skintones out there, so this one will be someone's shade.

PO-03 is quite close to BO-02. I think BO-02 is a little bit less yellow than PO-03, but to the casual eye they look quite close. Also another shade that's around the NC20 range - the difference here is not how dark or light the shade is, but how much yellow there is.

PO-045 is possibly NC25 or NC30. It's not as orange as O-04 and not as dark.

O-03 is also very close to BO-02 and PO-03. O-03 has more yellow than either BO-02 and PO-03, however. Once again, although this is potentially an NC20 shade in terms of depth, the shades are subtly different from each other in terms of how much yellow is in each shade.

Out of all the shades, it seems to my eye that the O series is the most yellow, followed by PO, and then BO. So for girls deciding between O-03, PO-03 and BO-02, the determining factor could possibly be the amount of yellow in their skin. Girls with more yellow would prefer O-03, and PO-03. I personally think BO-02, being beigey-yellow but not too yellow, could be a shade for Asian girls who find most foundations to be too yellow for them, especially cooler-toned Asian girls who have trouble finding a match.