Review: Physicians Formula Correcting Powder

$13.95, drugstore.com

At first I liked this powder. And then I didn't. I was impressed by its neato swirl of colors that promised to correct the various discolorations on my face. And it does make your face a more even color. The problem is that the new color is a white-ish color that makes me look like Mulan when she was about to meet the Matchmaker.

I bought the powder in Creamy Natural, and I might have been better off with Translucent. First the good: It did color-correct and create a more polished look. It doesn't smell like anything. That's about it. As for the bad, they are many and varied. The powder is pressed, but it sloughs off too easily. I always get too much on my brush, regardless of what brush I use. I've tried a regular foundation brush, the brush enclosed with the package, and a kabuki brush. They all picked up too much powder and made my face look super white. I ended up sweeping the brush around the compact to get all the colors, and then tapping about 80% of it off. Because the powder also comes off so easily, it gets really messy. I traveled with this last week, and it was definitely no fun.

Also, The powder does not minimize pores nor does it set well. It just sits on the skin and it is very obvious you are wearing powder. The website claims that it is also a primer, but I call hooey on that. I would never wear this without another sort of primer or foundation underneath. On the other hand, I didn't have any sort of break-outs while wearing this, and it also kept my face from being shiny for most of the day. It didn't leave any smudges on my collar or other areas of my clothing. All in all, I would say that for the price, this isn't a very bad choice if you already have pale skin. I think that it completely ignored my yellow undertones to make me look way too pale, instead of warm.

I've also tried the color correcting palette from e.l.f., and that wasn't great either. Looks like I will have to keep looking for a good color correcter. I have my eye on some of the other drugstore brands, such as this cool looking one from Almay, a frequently recommended one from L'Oreal or this one from Revlon.

tl;dr: Only good for people with pale skin. Ended up in the rubbish bin, but worth the try.