It’s taken me a while to get round to reviewing NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation and I’m pleased that I left it so long in retrospect because it’s allowed me to do a comparison against other ‘weightless’ formulas. Sorry to say that I’m not a fan of NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation at all!
Its natural competitor is Dior Nude Air Foundation, so I’ve done a side by side comparison with that, but Maybelline Dream Flawless is just as good as either of them if you’re looking for a more budget friendly alternative. If it was my money, I’d first buy Dior (in fact, I did, yesterday!), then Maybelline and then NARS.
The difference, mainly, is in the finish but NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation is very slightly heavier in texture than Dior. When I put on NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation, I felt it looked too heavy and actually drew attention to fine lines rather than disappearing them. It felt drier in consitency and I disliked it enough to take it all off and start again with something else. When I put on Dior Nude Air, it is like wearing silky air but with enough pigment to give decent coverage. With NARS, there’s just too much pigment and too much weight for a ‘weightless’ claim. Perhaps I was too heavy handed with one and not the other.. I don’t know.. but with Dior it is instantly weightless, with NARS you have to wait a bit to forget it’s there.
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Dior claims a ‘serum’ texture and perhaps that’s the difference – NARS doesn’t feel like it has any serum element and the associated ‘slip’ to it at all and I felt that it runs to dry. Now is a good time to mention a tip that was given to me by a Twitter friend who’d seen it on Wayne Goss’s site – to add in a tiny drop of oil (Body Shop Vitamin E is perfect) to the foundation to give it more slip and flexibility.
Against Dior, Maybelline doesn’t have the sophistication of ingredients, but the finish is damn close. Dior needs less working in than Maybelline – it literally glides over the skin – and has a slightly more powdery end result.
My skin is pale olive at the moment so my best match in Dior (£33) is 030 (HERE) and for Maybelline (£8.99) it’s 22 (HERE) and for NARS I didn’t really find (amongst samples) a perfect match – I felt the colour selection I was sent had yellow tones in them.
To summarise, Maybelline if you’re budgeting, Dior if you aren’t. NARS not at all.
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