How to choose the right Face Powder for your Skin tone?

Being a grown young adult myself, this isn’t even new to me to explain that women take time and put the extra effort to look put together from time to time. I prefer to look put together when and if my mood allows me to.

Regardless of anyone saying otherwise, women like to look pretty, if not for someone, but at least for themselves. The art of beauty and makeup has become so diverse in the recent generation that it becomes a challenge to keep up with all beauty trends that pop up ever so often through social media which is nowadays one of the most common ways to introduce new beauty products and cosmetics as well as small businesses and cosmetic lines.

Ever since I entered my pre-teenage, I gradually started incorporating different beauty products into my beauty routine. Most of which was my mother’s and were the most local they could get for the cheapest prices. In hindsight, from my age 22 perspective, I wish I had better taste and explored a little more. A big part that I feel was missing from my beauty routine was faced powders. Instead of which I used Pond’s talcum powders or even worse, the “Thanda Thanda cool cool” Navratna powders that always left a ghostly white cast. I always had a mindset that “oh it’s just powder, I’ll just slap it on and be good to go” wrong.

You see, there’s a vast variety of face powders that contribute to different requirements of facial construction of each man and/or woman in the whole world. So many face shapes, skin tones, skin types, textures, and requirements have to adhere to diversity.

So, how do we choose our “Holy Grail” face powder?

First and foremost, it is very important to remember that everyone has skin tones and that color theory is real. There is no “one shade fits all” in the beauty industry you hone the color theory and invent a face powder or ‘any’ cosmetic product that serves not one but many skins without having the company or person invest in other products. Secondly, don’t listen to YouTube tutorials! Embrace your natural skin tones and try to enhance them in your way with the products that suit your skin type and tone. Thirdly, look at yourself, and examine your skin tones yourselves. There are a ton of options out there for you to experiment so it’s always better to experiment, examine, observe then come to a conclusion before starting a cosmetic shopping frenzy. Your boy tells you a lot through the translucently visible veins on your wrist to the color of your fingertips when squeezed, and the concentration of the color from the blood accumulated on your fingertips, all these little things tell you a lot about our skin tone and the right shade of any product that will suit us best.

Your facial skin tone can range anywhere from cool to warm to neutral and sometimes experimentation works wonders to find out the best for you. Warm tones require warm shades, anywhere from yellows to reds to peachy shades, and cool tones however require more blues, purples, and maybe a tinge of green. Neutral tones, as the name, suggests requiring either warm or cool shades. Crazy I know.

Take a gander at the various viral videos of Chinese women piling or scraping off their whole beauty beat to become a completely different person which goes to show how well they’ve used different products from different brands that suit their skin tone to create something entirely artistic or become flawlessly gorgeous. The same applies to many beauty gurus and makeup artists who technically do the same things by honing their skin tone and just enhancing their natural features to look beautiful in their way. Face powders play a huge role in a women’s beauty regime to either set her make-up, bake (not the bake “cakes” bake but the other type of baking using face powders that gives dimension to the face and silhouette as well as the contours and sculpts the face to enhance the facial features that would ultimately make a big in the finished look.

There’s a whole range of powders nowadays, Setting powder, Baking powder, loose powder, pressed powder, mineral powder, translucent powder, HD powder, and finishing powder. And each one of these serves its purpose from drag makeup to every day “no-makeup” makeup. Although one may buy a plethora of face powders, other people find their Holy Grail face powder and stick with it. Just so, you know, a lot of these people will have an idea about their skin tones or will have been advised in the right ways by the right people about what would their skin tones.

Finding the right tones for your face powders is pretty much like finding the right puzzle piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is your face. The easiest way to figure out your skin tone is the following ways:

1. Blue or purple veins under the skin on your wrist, you have a cool skin tone.
2. Green or a greenish blue under the skin on your wrist, you have a warm skin tone.
3. If none of the above, you most likely have a neutral skin tone.

Keep in mind when I mentioned, “Pigments” in face powders, yes, pigments go into the making of a variety of face powders, be it compact or in loose form. Most commonly pigmented face powders come pressed which, predominantly depending on the formula, will most likely deliver a certain amount of coverage and that coverage eventually shows up if you don’t choose the right shades according to your skin tone. Also, when applying do NOT forget to blend it down to your neck this way you may get away with it in case you come across the incorrect shade of face powder. Furthermore, face powders and their formulae highly depend on the application, some may call for a powder puff or beauty blender, or even a brush so u can experiment and figure out how well the powder settles.

If we want to go deeper into finding the right shade, we need to understand another fact about ourselves, which is our ethnicity and nationality sometimes shine through our facial tones. Hiding them behind shades that only cater to western skin tones. Even though one might say that all Indians look the same, a much more observant eye would tell the difference between them all.

All browns are not essentially browns. Some have warm tones and cool tones. Some might be redder and some may be more yellow while some may be both warm “and” cool. Take a look at the following chart to under the range of brown skin tones so that you, the reader, might find yours.

1. #8D5524
2. #C68642
3. #E0AC69
4. #F1C270
5. #FFDBAC

Some more charts would show you a vaster variation of the Indian skin tone such as the following chart that was procured by dermatologists to give us a taste of a variety of browns.

1. Fair
2. Wheatish
3. Medium Brown
4. Brown
5. Darl Brown
6. Intense Dark

So quite apparently you can see the ranges Indian skin has and each one of them has a story of its own. Telling us about their life, lifestyle, their personality, and even their origin as well as family background. For time immemorial Indians had been huge fans of being fair and beautiful since for us Indians, beauty lay in the hand of fairness and pristine porcelain skin as the definition of beauty was far skin and flawless skin texture, it should be smooth as silk that everyone would appreciate and would produce a good name in the society. This went on for centuries till the day when women rose against complexion-based racism. The best part about modernism and progression in time is that now the perception that beauty doesn’t in just one complexion of one tone, in music you don’t hear a single note, and in painting, you don’t use a single color. In the same way, in beauty there is variety, there is diversity, each one of which is unique.

Exposing yourself to a wide range of skin tones and finding yours among them is a great way to recognize your skin tone and buy one such face product that will suit your complexion. A couple of brands like Lakme and Sugar have a wide range of shades to choose from and it is up to you to discover which shade suits your skin tone. Skin tone and skin complexion are two different things. Skin “tone” refers to the color of your skin while your complexion is your overall appearance. So, to build a good base for your complexion it is most important to find the perfect match for your skin.

Using face powders also depend on the ‘kind’ of makeup look you’re going for. Full glam or everyday casual makeup or a “no-makeup “makeup look. Sometimes you make want to look dewy and glossy, and you can use face powder that has a dewy and sparkly, almost highlighter-like finish.

Whatever the foundation cannot be different from the face powder so, after you finish your makeup, let’s say it’s full glam makeup so you can complete building your base. I would suggest you use finish using a translucent setting powder to set the base so it doesn’t budge. However, for a “no-makeup” makeup look, which I believe many Indian women prefer, one can skip foundation and just use a high-coverage face powder that covers blemishes and dark circles even. One that l personally use is by Maybelline New York, Fit Me Matte+Poreless Compact Powder. I discovered this when I was in my final year of college, I was living by myself for the last months to finish off our last semesters and attend the final exams when I found ran fresh out of my older face powder was from the same brand and I needed a new one. Luckily the mart in front of my apartment building was selling Maybelline products one of which was the aforementioned product, I selected my shade keeping in mind that I am NOT fair, I am tanned, and almost a coral brown-ish color should suit me as I have a much warmer skin tone with a yellowish undertone. I bought it and brought it he, tested it out, and indeed I was right. So the secret of shade recognition was of course my exposure to the wide range of shades that exist as well as the middle shades, shades that come after second to fairer shades and figuring out my skin tone. That is pretty much I found my perfect face powder and the corresponding shade. I even kept in mind the “purpose” of the face powder I was going to buy so it is equally important as the right shade and the perfect brand that suits and includes your shade within its range.

One thing about beauty that everyone must know is the horizons have expanded so much nowadays. There is no “one” shade but many all coexist with their respective tones and undertones. We all are now living in a diversified world. A world where inclusivity rules over all. The matter of inclusivity must also be considered by many brands and companies as well as businesses since that is the key to their success as well as people’s happiness. Beauty isn’t just makeup and cosmetics. Beauty is about being able to give yourself the gift of beauty to boost self-esteem, and confidence to live in a world where many would thrive to put you down. But on the other hand, makeup also isn’t the only way for you to be confident, embracing yourself selves is also highly encouraged nowadays since the barriers to looking a certain way have been removed. Now you can embrace and enhance your natural features and be happy in your skin.

So be happy in your skin, and do things your skin will thank you for.