Review: Skinfood Red Ginseng Firming Base

Skinfood Red Ginseng Firming Base

From The Box:
This makeup base contains Red Ginseng to moisture skin texture. This is very light and fluid with tightening effect that smoothes out wrinkles and tones down signs of tiredness. It has a very natural finish.

My Skin Type:
Actually very oily, but surpressed with BHA exfoliator. Results in generally ranging from very dry to normal/dry skin. Generally dehydrated, very sensitive, and acne prone.

My Skin Tone:
Some said I have very fair, Casper-ish complexion. Frankly speaking, that’s what you see in my FOTDs, but I personally think I look (much) darker in person than in those photos. Still, yes, I’m quite fair.

Bottomline: my skintone range is lighter than MAC NC/NW15 to NC/NW20.

I have neutral cool undertone.

Packaging:
Weird plastic bottle with pump. Weird because the pump doesn’t have a pipe! So I stored mine upside down.

Color Selection:
Only 1 color is available, and it’s very, very pale with pink undertone.

Texture:
It’s creamy out of the pump but once it comes in contact with skin it becomes rather fluid.

Coverage:
Totally adjustable. From sheer to medium; you can build it as you like.

Blendability:
No problem. It spreads well, but it dries down quite quickly so beware.

Finish:
Semi-matte. The pink undertone brightens my skin well. It’s has glow, but not overly so at all.

Oil Control/Lasting Power:
It seems to be pretty good on my t-zone. It doesn’t feel oily or heavy. Instead, it seems to bring down a bit of the oilies. A surprising feature, since I was thinking that this product is something marketed toward more mature skin (with its ‘firming’ claims etc).

My General Review:
I bought this just out of curiosity, because Skinfood has pretty packaging and their BB creams are not bad at all on my skin. And this product surpasses my so-so expectation!

At first I used this on its own. It comes out in a liquid-cream consistency, but melts into a liquid when it comes into contact with skin. I can build it up to cover my red post acne marks beautifully. The pink tone brightens my skin, gives me a satin glow too. Plus, it glides on smoothly on top of my pores, making it tighter. Perfect! The only thing is the color match. It’s sooo pale, it can look unnatural even on my fair skin! My younger brother gave me thumbs down on my makeup one day, because it’s unnaturally pale and pink.

So I tried to use it underneath a BB cream. I don’t know why but my mind said that this will pair beautifully with Skinfood Gingko Green BB cream. And yep, it does! It improves the BB cream in every way. It neutralizes the slight yellow tone on Gingko BB. The pore tightening effect also comes intact, making the Gingko BB looks better than ever. Ginseng base also imparts slight glow to the Gingko BB, giving the illusion of healthy skin. Yum. For all that effect, I only need a thin layer of Ginseng base.

Unfortunately, as a base, for me it doesn’t increase ease of BB cream/foundation blendability. On my hands when I tested it, I know that it smooths out my skin to some degree, but I prefer my base/primer to give extremely slippery silicone-y finish, and this one doesn’t.

Oh well, but I’ll accept that because my BB still glides on top of this (albeit not as nice as when I use super silicon-y primers). The end result is still great And I know for fact that some people doesn’t prefer slipper silicone-y finish

What Else You Need To Know:
I don’t know anything about the anti wrinkle and firming claim. I know for a fact though, that wrinkles can’t be cured totally with a topical product. Firming too, no topical ingredient can really firm your skin permanently.

So for me, personally, I’d dismiss those claims.

Application:
This seems to dry pretty fast on your face, so do it one section at a time, and you’ll be fine

Price:
Not too expensive, typical Skinfood product. I believe I got it at around IDR200,000 (~USD20)?

Availability:
It may still be available in local Skinfood stores, but last time I checked it already missing from the Singaporean web. Is it discontinued already?

Ingredients:
No full ingredient list, unfortunately Even if it’s there in the label, I wouldn’t have been able to read it since everything apart from the description is in Korean

I hope it doesn’t contain alcohol and such But I know for sure it contains fragrance though! It smells slightly like herbal.

Overall Rating:
4 out of 5. Brightens, gives pretty glow, and works very well on my huge pores. But color may be too pale for some people, and I prefer highly silicone-y primers.

BTW if you have uber pale, pink toned skin (like around NW5-10), I believe this will make a great foundation for you

*This review will be cross posted in http://www.makeupalley.com under username Crescent_Shadow.

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