Missha BB Cream

As you may have noticed from some of my shoplogs I have set out to trying some new beauty products. One of these new products is a real Asian BB Cream. I bought the Garnier BB Cream when it came out in October and have been loving it. I have been using it every day ever since I got it, but I also heard that this BB cream wasn’t a ‘real’ BB cream, but more of a tinted moisturizer. That is why I did some research online to find a BB cream that could possibly match my pale Western skin and found one by a Korean brand called Missha. I ordered it from Ebay and have been using it for a few weeks now.

For those that don’t know, BB creams (or Blemish Balms) are Asian creams that give you the best of both worlds. On the one hand they act as a day cream with high levels of SPF sunscreen, and on the other hand they give you the coverage of a light to medium coverage foundation. Since they are tailored for the Asian market, many of the brands are not suitable for Western skin tones, as the undertones of the color is wrong and thus doesn’t match people with a pink undertone. Skin 79 is a very famous BB cream, but I heard that when you have dry skin you still have to use a day cream underneath since the only one suitable for Western skin types is for normal to oily skin. To me that would just repute the reason why you would want to use a BB cream (the all-in-one) feature, and so I decided to look further. This is what I found:

Missha M Perfect Cover BB Cream in no. 13 Bright Beige

An SPF 42 cream that promises to brighten the skin, heal wrinkles and blemishes. It also says it has whitening and anti-wrinkle properties.

I went with the 20 ml version as I wanted to know whether it works before buying a full sized product. This 20 ml tester cost around 8 dollar on Ebay.

It’s a fairly thick cream and a little goes a long way…

Spreading it out you can see that it dries pretty quickly, so you have to work fast. I prefer blending this in with my fingers. The heat of your hands makes it easier to spread out.

All spread out, you can see a bit more shine on the bottom part of my hand, but no visible lines or any other effects. That’s why I also decided to swatch it on my face.

Left side: bb cream, right side: nothing (no powder)

Excuse the crappy picture, but I had just worked out for 2+ hours and it makes my skin much redder than usual. But I thought that would show the effect much more clearly. You can definitely see a difference between my two cheeks, yet the color blends nicely with the rest of my face. Due to the whitening agent in the cream, the cream initially looked too light to me, but when you let it settle for a bit, it’s as if it adjusts to your skin as it is absorbed. I know some people don’t like how the Asian BB creams have this lightening/ whitening effect, but I personally don’t mind. I’m pale to begin with, so I use bronzer on a daily basis to deepen my skin in places.

Close ups: (of the cheek not covered in the picture above)

No BB cream

With BB cream (no powder)

I decided to take these close ups so you would really be able to see the effect of the cream. It’s give a light shine, covers the redness, reduces the visibility of blemishes instantly and yet gives a very natural my-skin-but-better effect. It even minimizes my pores! It does all that, without causing any irritation or breakouts, while moisturizing my skin and it stays on all day with a bit of powder on top.

This BB cream is definitely the real deal and the color matches my skin tone too, so I dare say that this can be used when you have a pink undertone like me (FYI: I am NW15/ NW20 at MAC). It is much better than the Garnier one too. Right now I only use some concealer to cover up my under eye circles, whereas before I also used it to reduce the redness in the rest of my face. That won’t be necessary anymore as this Missha BB cream does all that and more!

Needless to say I’m very satisfied with this product. Have you tried any real Asian BB creams yet?