Foundation Friday for Over 50s | Maybelline Fit Me! Matte & Poreless

Here’s the 2nd installment of my new series “Foundation Friday for Over 50s” in which I’m searching the world over for a great foundation for mature skin!. Today’s victim is Maybelline Fit Me! Matte & Poreless. I put it through it’s paces applying it 4 different ways and wearing it 12 hours to see if it really can make my skin matte and poreless…

Maybelline Fit Me! Matte & Poreless* ~ $7.99 for 1 oz., comes in 16 shades

I bought it in shade #125 Nude Beige and it was a really good, natural looking match for my skin.

Maybelline Matte & Poreless claims to be a “tone + texture-fitting foundation for the ultimate natural fit. Mattifies, erases pores and matches natural tone. For Normal to Oily Skin.” Maybelline recommends applying this foundation with fingers and blending well.

It comes in a heavy glass bottle with an open pour top which is the first strike against it… I really do prefer a neater dispensing mechanism.

It’s a mainly water & silicone formula with alcohol high on the list at position 5 of about 15 ingredients. I doesn’t contain sunscreen, fragrance, or any skin nourishing or anti-aging ingredients (which is all fine with me since I use separate serums, moisturizers, and sunscreen daily under makeup).

Application

I tried applying this foundation 5 different way with varying amounts of success. By far the worst way to apply is the recommended finger method which left the foundation looking smeary and causing it to skip past the pores and look generally bad. Damp sponge and flat-top brush worked better, but it was the addition of heavy primer, finishing powder and setting spray that finally did the trick. I also tried the Wayne Goss method of adding a drop of oil to it, but that just made it shiny and sheer which kind of defeats the purpose of a matte & poreless foundation!

Maybelline Fit Me! Matte & Poreless applied with fingers

The damp blending sponge gave the smoothest application by pressing the foundation into pores and shearing it out a little. With the sponge it blends easily and seamlessly.

It didn’t fare as well with the brush and seemed to break up on the surface when applied with a flat-top kabuki, but the brush gave the fullest coverage and made it easy to build the foundation to full coverage.

Applied with a flat-top kabuki brush the coverage is less consistent and spotty

Coverage

The coverage out of the bottle is medium to full. One coat with a damp blending sponge is sheer to medium, but full coverage can easily be achieved with 2 coats applied with a brush. It doesn’t feel as light as the serum foundations, but it’s also not as heavy as most full coverage formulas falling somewhere in between.

Two coats applied with a damp blending sponge gives medium coverage & leaves an almost matte finish!

Once set it feels dry and silky, not tacky. It’s like a liquid to powder finish that’s almost matte but not quite poreless. When first applied with a sponge and using a primer, it does a reasonable job of smoothing the pores although they’re not “erased”. It does reflect a little light so it’s not completely matte, but it’s not flat either.

Pores were diminished and smoothed slightly, but not “erased”

Wrinkles

There was some slight settling into forehead wrinkles, but it did not settle into under eye wrinkles . It tended to settle more when used heavier to get full coverage.

Applied heavily to achieve full coverage caused slight settling into forehead wrinkles

Phone test

Even though it feels dry and set, it does come off easily on anything that touches it, for example the nose pads of glasses, cell phones, and fingers.

Flash photo

Wear

Used alone the wear is very disappointing. It becomes shiny after about 4 hours, and starts to wear off shortly after that.  The shine accentuates pores and wrinkles so any smoothing and mattifying is negated pretty quickly.

Maybelline Fit Me! Matte & Poreless after 4 hours. It’s come off where my sunglasses rest on the sides of my nose, and it’s gathered up in the crease by the side of the nostril. The increasing shine is making pores look worse.

When combined with primer, setting powder, and finishing spray the wear was much better with the color lasting 10 hours, but it still got shiny after 6-7 hours.

Brush Application

I used Smashbox PhotoFinish Light Primer* hoping to get longer wear. It helped the color to stay put longer, but it still got shiny after 4 hours. I went to my daughter’s lacrosse game and it was 86 degrees out so this was a good test to see how it did with sweaty conditions (like a hot flash), and sadly it didn’t make the grade. After the game, I felt very shiny and damp and the makeup had slid around and come off in patches.

Sponge Application

I liked it best applied with a damp blending sponge to sheer the foundation out a little and press it into the pores. It looked very nice when just applied but deteriorated quickly.

Sponge Application with Helpers

Once I knew the sponge was the way to go, I started with Tarte Clean-Slate Timeless Smoothing Primer*, then applied the foundation, then set it with IT Cosmetics Bye Bye Pores Setting Powder* and finished it with ELF Mist & Set Setting Spray*. It was the day of my other daughter’s senior prom and I knew I’d be outside taking pictures late in the day ( it was 87 degrees) and I wanted the foundation to still look good. . . and it worked!!

Final Assessment

Maybelline Fit Me! Matte & Poreless proved to be a lot of work this week! It took 5 tries to finally get it right. To make it look good for more than a few hours required primer, setting powder and setting spray, and that’s just too much work for me!

Pros:

Great price, good selection of shades, colors are natural looking, very nice matte but not mask-like finish (temporarily), diminishes pores a bit (temporarily), minimal settling into wrinkles, blends easily, medium to full coverage.

Cons: 

Alcohol content, open top bottle, very poor wear (4 hours is all you get before it looks bad), comes off easily on phone and glasses, gets shiny quickly.

Click Here for My Picks for the Best Foundations for Mature Skin

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This is not a sponsored post.