Something that drives me nuts is trying to find good tutorials or reviews of makeup for pale skin. And I mean ACTUALLY pale, not “I wear MAC NC25” or your foundation shade contains the word “caramel” or “sand” or “tan”. You might have light-toned skin (in the “light” end of the spectrum, or “lighter than most”), but not pale. Finding a good, true “porcelain” shade is very difficult, and finding good ideas for things like highlighting, bronzing and contouring is even more elusive.

Here’s a great example: When I go to the MAC counter (or, well, many counters, actually!), they always want to match me to NW15, because it’s one of the lightest shades they offer What I’m wearing currently is MatchMaster 1.0, which is much better on me (I wear it daily and it looks very natural on me) – and they still tried to tell me it’s too light! Nope. I am porcelain, with pinky undertones, and the amount of “light” foundations that are far too dark is, well, most of them.

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Check out the difference here — on the right is StudioFix Fluid NW15 and MatchMaster 1.0 on the left. Blended all the way out you can barely see it on my arm, but the SFF is much too dark and yellow! The only time SFF NW15 is even close to matching my skin is when I get home from Burning Man after two weeks in the desert sun, and EVEN THEN it’s BARELY light enough! I do wear SFF in NW15 from time to time, but generally go very, very light with it (sometimes I blend it with moisturizer, it works quite well that way) and always powder over with StudioFix Powder in NW10 to lighten it up.

It’s harder still to find a good shade at the drugstore, but I think I’ve struck gold with Rimmel Stay Matte in Light Porcelain 010. I don’t think I’d go quite as far as to call it a dupe unless you account for it being much more full coverage and slightly less yellow, but both look very natural on me and I’m happy with each! The MatchMaster blends down so naturally that it’s very easy to wear, the Rimmel Stay Matte takes a bit more paying attention so to not look unnatural.

But the search always continues for tutorials and new products, of course!

Have you found any great tutorials for bronzing, contouring, and highlighting truly pale/porcelain skin? What products do you like to use?