The Anastasia Beverly Hills Beauty Balm is one of the latest stick foundations to hit the market and as someone who is obsessed with stick foundations I had to pick it up to give it a go! As I tend to purchase 95% of my makeup online, I ended up with two shades as I took me two purchases to get the right shade (the downside of buying makeup online!). This particular stick foundation is infused with 8 skin loving ingredients in the form of a serum that is suppose to provide skin care benefits to your skin as well as sheer to light coverage. The Anastasia Beverly Hills Beauty Balm is available from Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s or Ulta for $42USD and Sephora AU for $79AUD.
Wear & Coverage
As mentioned above, and from the swatches I ended up with two shades since I purchased this foundation online and got the initial shade wrong so had to place a second order to get something a tad lighter. In the end I’m glad I ended up with both as I think during the summer time the deeper shade would be a better fit for me. The shade I initially got was 5 which I intend to wear during the summer months and the shade that suits me perfectly during the winter months is 3.
I know the description states that this skin foundation is more sheer to light coverage, but I personally found it closer to light to medium. Which I felt was better because one of the benefits of these types of foundations is that if you decide to apply directly with a brush you can really sheer it out, but if you apply it directly to the face and then blend you’ll get much better coverage so it’s very flexible to work with depending on the condition of your skin at the time.
The wear on this is fantastic, I ended up taking it with me for a short weekend vacation and it lasted amazingly well despite me sitting in a heated pool room for several hours. If anything I felt like it sunk into my skin better overtime giving my skin a nice natural glow. I can only assume this is because this foundation has skin care properties which make it sit on the skin better than a lot of other stick foundations I use that by the end of the day just look like standard foundation, a little bit cakey and separated.
However if you have very problematic skin that requires a heavy coverage, this might help lighten and blur some of the texture and discoloration on the skin but it won’t completely cover it. This particular foundation I felt worked amazing because my skin is already in relatively good condition.
You can actually get away without powdering this down at all, especially if you have dry skin like me. It doesn’t feel greasy to slippery and tends to dry down to a nice satin finish. Another plus as I find most powders pretty drying as I get older.
Scent
I always love to touch on scent for all my foundation related products because it’s something that’s such a sticking point with me, but there is no particular scent with this foundation (another reason I love it so much) and is great if you are someone who is sensitive to scent and wants to avoid it.
Overall
I wasn’t expecting to love this foundation so much when it first landed, the only person I had seen use it before it appeared in my local Sephora was Victoria Magrath in one of her youtube videos and I wasn’t the biggest fan of how she applied it (she used her fingers and I’m much more of a beauty blender or brush kind of girl), but despite using her fingers it looked pretty good (though her skin is freaking amazing with her expensive skincare and various skin treatments so it’s always hard to know how good makeup actually performs on untouched normal skin like mine) so I decided to pick it up when it arrived in Australia and I’m so glad I did! Coverage and wear time is perfect for my needs, lack of scent is a winner in my books and it’s so quick and easy to apply. When I have less than 5 minutes to get a face on, I swipe it all over the center areas of my face, blend out with a foundation brush and am ready to go!
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