Listen lads, my mind has been blown. I just found out information that has rocked my foundation world. Many of you may know this already, but I asked a few of my mates and this was news to them too so I’m going to share this little golden nugget of information with you… just in case.

So I’m currently using the Dior Forever Undercover foundation, which is a 24 Hour full coverage foundation. I got a sample a few months ago before purchasing as it is quite pricey at €45, however it has 40mls where as most other foundations are 30ml. Still… expensive. Anyway, this is not a review of the foundation (I do love it for the record), but it is relevant to this story. So it is a water based foundation meaning it’s a lot less drying than other silicone based full coverage foundations and feels a lot lighter. Over the last few weeks I’ve been trying it with The Ordinary High-Adherence Silicone Primer and I had been really struggling to understand why it wasn’t lasting throughout the day, it was going really patchy and I wasn’t really achieving that great finish that I did initially. This primer usually works so well for me. So it turns out you are supposed to match your primer to your foundation! WHO KNEW??? Maybe a lot of you but I certainly didn’t. If your foundation is water based, your primer should be water based too. And if your foundation is silicone based, your primer should be silicone based. Opposites do not attract in this scenario… at all!

How can you tell if your foundation is water based or silicone based? It probably won’t tell you this straight out but a quick way is to look at the ingredients. Both will contain aqua, so ignore this, but silicone based foundations will contain a lot of ingredients that end in ‘-cone’ such as Dimethicone, Dimethicone, Phenyl Trimethicone ect.

As a tester, I left my silicone primer out of my makeup routine this morning and my foundation is still flawless 9 hours later. Every day is definitely a school day!

Urban Decay All Nighter – Silicone Based Foundation

Diorskin Forever Undercover – Water Based Foundation

Too Faced Hangover – Water Based Primer

The Ordinary High Adherence -Silicone Primer