Whenever I talk to my friends about online shopping, whether it’s shopping for makeup or clothes, I always hear someone say that they don’t do that because they think it’s way too difficult to find something that matches their skintone, preferences or whatever. They think it’s way too tricky. Even though I do get where they are coming from, I don’t agree with them. I’m obviously very professional at online shopping -it’s what I do all the time when I don’t have anything more important to do- so I know what to look at and how to decide wether you can bet on it or not. Not everyone is that experienced at it and that can obviously complicate things. Therefore I thought it might be fun to create a simple guide to online shopping for these people, so that’s what this post is about. So, if you are interested in online shopping for makeup but you don’t know how, please continue reading!
Know where to buy
My first tip might be the most important one. This doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the shade or the quality of the product, but it does have something to do with makeup shopping. I think it’s very important to know where you can buy the products that you’re looking for. You do need to make sure you’re shopping from a place that is trustworthy and will send you the real product. Or will send you any product in general. There are a lot of webshops nowadays that claim to sell real products, but are actually fake. Sometimes they won’t even ship any product at all. So, before you buy, always check the internet thoroughly to find out whether or not you’re buying from a trustworthy site.
My favourite trustworthy makeup shopping sites are:
Feelunique, Lookfantastic, Beautybay, Cultbeauty, Douglas and Ici Paris.
Don’t trust the websites pictures
Another important tip is that you shouldn’t trust the pictures used on the website. With that I don’t mean that I think they are fake, what I’m trying to say is that the colours they use to refer to a specific shade are most of the time not very true to what the colour looks like in real life. Sometimes it might be pretty accurate, but in general they don’t give you that great of an idea of what the product will look like.
Therefore, go online and look up a ton of swatches. Not just one swatch, because the colour might look different on some skin tones and different cameras pick up colours different. No, just look up as many swatches as you can possibly find. Watch Youtube videos about the product you’re eyeing. Make sure you get a really good idea of what the shade you’re going to buy will look like. This goes for both lipstick as foundation but also for any other makeup product.
Look up reviews
Another smart thing to do is to look up reviews about the product. Of course products work differently on different people, but reading a good amount of reviews can give you a pretty solid idea of what a product is going to look like and how it will work out for you.
When you’re buying very famous, cult-favourite, products, make sure you’re very critical when you’re reading reviews. More often than not every review you can find is extremely positive and nobody has anything bad to say about it. In those cases what I like to do is look up some negative reviews and see what those people say. Of course this doesn’t mean that because 1 out of a million people hates the product, it’s a bad product, but it does give you an idea of what people don’t like about it.
At the end you can come to your own conclusion, knowing the pro’s and cons about the product, and decide whether or not if this product will work out for you or not.
Buying a foundation online
The last thing I want to talk about is buying a foundation online. I know that I’ve semi-covered this in the second tip, but I did want to spend an extra paragraph on it because this is what most people I talk to struggle with. They are a little hesitant when it comes to ordering foundations online because they think they won’t get a proper colour match. If you already have a couple of good foundation matches you can use websites like Findation to see what they think will match you, but in all other cases it will come down to looking up tons of swatches and reviews.
Try to find reviews from people with a similar skin tone as you have and find swatches where they compare the two shades you’re doubting about. It obviously isn’t a risk-free method, but for me this always ends up working out really, really well. I almost never buy foundations in the wrong shade anymore these days!
With that being said I think it’s time to end today’s post. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and be sure to let me know what your tips are for online shopping for makeup!
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