The Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin foundation launched to great fanfare at the start of 2022. Influencers across Instagram and TikTok flooded to praise the new entry to the best foundation market and while we can’t quite go as far as to say we love this foundation, it’s not a bad product at all.
Its thinner consistency and apple fruit water base make it a lightweight foundation that’s easy to apply and blend. It doesn’t cling to dry skin or accentuate areas of roughness. It’s also more hydrating than other foundations we’ve tried and it creates a soft, natural glow.
The coverage is also impressive, especially for such a thin foundation, and it left our skin looking balanced and even.
However, the brand’s claims about 16-hour wear and its multiple skincare benefits didn’t quite live up to our expectations. The foundation didn’t seem to like our oily skin and slid off within hours of application. This left our skin feeling heavy, and our complexion looking greasy. This obviously impacted its coverage and by the end of the day, the redness on our cheeks and nose was visible.
We saw a minimal improvement in our dullness and dark circles over the four-week review period, but given this foundation costs almost £40, we had hoped for more.
That said, friends of ours with dry skin have said they love this foundation. They said it improves the texture of their skin and doesn’t cling to flaky skin as much as many other foundations do. If you have oily skin, we recommend you opt for the Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless foundation instead. It offers a similar performance with a more matte finish.
For everyone else, the Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin Foundation has a lot to offer. If you can afford the high price tag, that is.
Buy now from Sephora
| Charlotte Tilbury | £39 |
| Cult Beauty | £39 |
| Sephora | £39 |
In our Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin foundation review, we put the “skincare-inspired” makeup to the test to see how well it lasts, if it really can improve our complexion, and how the coverage performs in our before and after photos
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How we tested Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin foundation
Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin foundation: Shades
Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin foundation: Performance
Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin foundation: Before and After
Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin foundation review: Verdict
Beautiful Skin foundation review video
It’s a little over a year since Charlotte Tilbury launched its first “skincare-inspired” foundation called Beautiful Skin.
The brand promised the foundation would be suitable for all skin types, including mature.
It claimed it offered a host of skincare benefits and it said that the foundation is so effective, it can improve your skin with continued use.
In our major foundation group test, it didn’t stack up against many of its rivals but – as with all beauty products – the only way to really tell how good something is, is to test it for a long period of time.
For our Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin foundation review, we used the foundation at least three times a week for a month.
We took before and after photos, tracked its staying power, and put its skincare claims to the test.
Below we explain more about the Beautiful Skin foundation, how it fits in with the rest of the Charlotte Tilbury foundation range, and if it’s really worth £39.
FURTHER READING: We’ve reviewed and ranked the best Charlotte Tilbury foundations
The Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin foundation is the latest foundation launch from the celebrity makeup artist.
When it launched in 2022, it took the total number of foundations sold by Charlotte Tilbury to four.
These include:
Charlotte Tilbury also sells a product called the Hollywood Flawless Filter but this is a “glow booster” rather than a foundation so doesn’t provide the same level of coverage.
The foundation closely resembles the IT Cosmetics Your Skin But Better Foundation + Skincare in that they both provide medium coverage while offering skincare benefits from ingredients such as hyaluronic acid. Charlotte Tilbury’s version costs £39, while the IT Cosmetics tube is £32.50. The former comes in 30 shades, the latter comes in 39.
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mamabella The Beautiful Skin foundation from Charlotte Tilbury offers medium coverage and a radiant finish
What is the Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin foundation? Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin is a medium coverage foundation that promises to hydrate the skin, and ” combine instant glow and buildable coverage with long-term skincare benefits” thanks to the addition of rose complex and hyaluronic acid. Charlotte Tilbury claims the foundation improves the look of skin with each wear.
Beautiful Skin foundation price: £39
How to apply Beautiful Skin foundation: Charlotte Tilbury recommends applying Beautiful Skin foundation to your entire face before buffing it into your skin using a foundation brush.
Who should use Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin foundation? Suitable for all skin types but is particularly good for mature skin.
Where to buy: Charlotte Tilbury | Cult Beauty | Sephora
Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin foundation alternatives: Max Factor Miracle Glow (£12.99); IT Cosmetics Your Skin But Better Foundation + Skincare (£32.50)
For our Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful skin foundation review, we used it as our go-to foundation for a month. We used it alongside our usual makeup and skincare products which currently include the Embryollisse cream, CeraVe Repair Eye Cream, the Fenty Beauty Match Stix, and The Beauty Crop concealer.
We monitored the Beautiful Skin foundation’s staying power i.e how well the coverage and finish lasted throughout the day. We also assessed how easy it is to apply, and remove.
We also took images of our skin before and after applying the foundation using our smart mirror. This means we could objectively see how well the foundation blurred our pores and covered imperfections and redness.
Buy now from Sephora
The shades of Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin foundation vary slightly from those available with its other foundations. For example, if you’re a 5 Neutral in the Airbrush Flawless foundation you need to get the Beautiful Skin foundation in 6 Cool.
To make this easier, Charlotte Tilbury has created a Complexion Matrix that helps you match a shade in one product to a shade in another. The chart for Medium Skin Tones is below to show you an example, but you can see the matrix for light, tan and deep tones here.
Charlotte Tilbury Charlotte Tilbury has a Complexion Matrix that helps you determine which shade you need in which range
If you haven’t used a Charlotte Tilbury foundation before, or you’re not sure what shade you need, Charlotte Tilbury also has a Charlotte Tilbury Shade Finder tool, or you can book a 1-2-1 consultation with a Charlotte Tilbury expert if you want to be even more accurate.
We used the Shade Finder tool and were recommended shade 6 Neutral which turned out to be too dark. The neutral undertone worked well, but shade 6 is classed as a medium skin tone, and we’re closer to light and even fair. What’s more, the shade dried down even darker so we had to blend it well for it to look natural and even.
With this in mind, we recommend you opt for a slightly lighter shade than is needed to account for the oxidisation.
To apply the foundation, we experimented with a stippling brush, a flat foundation brush, a damp beauty blender, and our fingers. The best and most natural-looking result we achieved was putting a pump of foundation on the back of our hand, picking it up with the flat foundation brush and buffing it into the skin.
Due to water being the prominent ingredient in this foundation, the consistency is thin and runny. This meant that using a stippling brush created brush marks on the skin, while the beauty blender absorbed more foundation than we’d have expected, causing the coverage to be thinner than promised.
Speaking of coverage, despite the fact Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin foundation is described as medium, we found it performed better than expected in our orange and strawberry tests. If you’re not sure what we’re on about, check out our How we test foundations to find out which is the best guide. It’s not quite full coverage but it’s closer to medium-full than straight medium in our view.
As a result, the coverage is impressive, especially for such a relatively thin and lightweight foundation. It covered our redness and reduced the appearance of our pigmentation while balancing our overall skin tone.
Upon first application, the finish is soft and gives the skin a natural glow – as promised. However, as the day went on this shifted from dewy to shiny and our natural texture and pores became more visible.
By the end of the day, the foundation had then all but slid off our oily/combination skin and we had to reapply and cover it in powder if we were going out after work and needed our makeup to last. This is despite the fact Charlotte Tilbury claims it will last 16 hours.
While Charlotte Tilbury describes this foundation as “hydrating”, in our hydration test it dropped the levels of hydration in our skin by 0.4 points (-1.5%). This isn’t a huge drop – and the majority of foundations we test drop considerably more – but for a foundation described as being hydrating, we expected more.
In order to see the longer-term skincare effects of this foundation, you do have to wear this foundation daily for weeks. During the course of our Beautiful Skin Foundation review, we saw a marginal improvement in dullness and our dark circles. Our skin did look plump while wearing it but we didn’t see a significant change in our skin.
We also experienced a few breakouts during our testing period, more than usual.
FURTHER READING: Foundation samples UK: How to get free foundation samples online
The image shows how our skin looked before applying Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin foundation, and after.
mamabella | mamabella Upon first application, the finish is soft and gives the skin a natural glow – as promised. However, as the day went on this shifted from dewy to shiny and our natural texture and pores became more visible
The Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin foundation launched to great fanfare at the start of 2022. Influencers across Instagram and TikTok flooded to praise the new entry to the best foundation market and while we can’t quite go as far as to say we love this foundation, it’s not a bad product at all.
Its thinner consistency and apple fruit water base make it a lightweight foundation that’s easy to apply and blend. It doesn’t cling to dry skin or accentuate areas of roughness. It’s also more hydrating than other foundations we’ve tried and it creates a soft, natural glow.
The coverage is also impressive, especially for such a thin foundation, and it left our skin looking balanced and even.
However, the brand’s claims about 16-hour wear and its multiple skincare benefits didn’t quite live up to our expectations. The foundation didn’t seem to like our oily skin and slid off within hours of application. This left our skin feeling heavy, and our complexion looking greasy. This obviously impacted its coverage and by the end of the day, the redness on our cheeks and nose was visible.
We saw a minimal improvement in our dullness and dark circles over the four-week review period, but given this foundation costs almost £40, we had hoped for more.
That said, friends of ours with dry skin have said they love this foundation. They said it improves the texture of their skin and doesn’t cling to flaky skin as much as many other foundations do. If you have oily skin, we recommend you opt for the Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless foundation instead. It offers a similar performance with a more matte finish.
For everyone else, the Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin Foundation has a lot to offer. If you can afford the high price tag, that is.
@victoria_woolly_web This foundation DIVIDED my TikTok. Let’s see what the orange is saying 🍊#foryoupage #PerfectPartner #tiktok #fyp #foundationreview #foundations #charlottetilburymakeup #beautifulskin @Charlotte Tilbury ♬ Sunroof – Nicky Youre & dazy
Charlotte’s Beautiful Skin foundation is quite ingredient-heavy. There are a lot of oils, extracts, and silicones even though the most abundant ingredients are regular water, and Apple fruit water.
The latter not only hydrates the skin, but it acts as an antioxidant to protect the skin from environmental damage, which in turn gives it anti-ageing properties. Similarly, the addition of glycerin helps nourish and protect the skin.
Of the other ingredients that Charlotte Tilbury calls out on the website, the majority only feature in this foundation in small or even trace amounts.
For example, hyaluronic acid is the 30th ingredient on a list of 35. Ingredients are ordered based on how much of each one is in the formula. The higher up the list, the more of that ingredient it contains. Subsequently, the lower down the list, the less of that ingredient is found in the foundation.
Similarly, the use of Bixa Orellana Seed Extract – said by Charlotte Tilbury to reduce oil and shine – is in 25th place on the list, and the rose extract and fragrance drop even lower.
This isn’t to say that these ingredients don’t bring any benefits. After all, small amounts of ingredients that benefit the skin in a foundation are better than no skincare ingredients. However, this may explain why the improvement we saw in the skin was so minimal. It’s also worth bearing in mind – this foundation won’t be able to replace your skincare, but it may complement its benefits.
FURTHER READING: Skincare ingredient checker: Get to grips with what’s in your skincare with our ingredients guide
The numbers next to the ingredients refer to their respective irritation and comedogenic rating. If the numbers are green, the risks of irritation and breakouts from that ingredient are low. If they’re red, there is a chance that they could cause problems.
However, the overall formula ultimately determines how irritating, or pore-clogging a product is so these should be used as a guide only.
sii|h 0 0, Trimethylsiloxysilicate emo, Polyglyceryl-4 Isostearate emu, Sodium Chloride vc, Lauroyl Lysine vc, Dimethicone/Vinyl Dimethicone Crosspolymer vc, Disteardimonium Hectorite vc, Sodium Dehydroacetate pres, Hydrogenated Olive Oil Unsaponifiables emo, Caprylyl Glycol h|emo, 1,2-Hexanediol solv, Sodium Gluconate chel|h, Tocopheryl Acetate aox 0 0, Triethoxycaprylylsilane, Maltodextrin, Bixa Orellana Seed Extract, Pentylene Glycol solv|h, Aluminum Hydroxide emo|h|vc, Butylene Glycol h|solv 0 1, Cassia Angustifolia Seed Polysaccharide, Sodium Hyaluronate 
sii|h 0 0, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Fruit Extract emo, Rosa Damascena (Rose) Flower Oil 
aox|perf|amic, Rosa Damascena (Rose) Flower Water, Pentaerythrityl Tetra-Di-T-Butyl Hydroxyhydrocinnamate aox|presHover the mouse / tap over an ingredient for short explanation. Read more on INCIDecoder.
Victoria is founder and editor-in-chief of mamabella, freelance journalist and Mum. She has a passion for empowering people to feel beautiful whatever their age, size, skin type and budget
