Bourjois Healthy Balance powder

I thought I’d take a break from all the eyeshadow reviews I’ve been doing and switch things up this week. So after my new favorite face product and some lipsticks, it’s time to look at a face powder. The Bourjois Healthy Balance powder to be precise. This powder is one that is raved about by many bloggers and I bought it based on so many raving reviews that made me think: I have to try that.

Bourjois Healthy Balance Unifying Powder 52 Vanilla

First things first, this isn’t a transparent powder. Instead, the Healthy Balance powder comes in different shades to match your skin tone. I bought the lightest shade available: 52 Vanilla. After having tried the Too Faced Primed & Poreless powder, I was very curious as to what this powder would do. But that retails for roughly $30, whereas this powder costs €11.95. At more than half the price, it would be great if this powder is as good or even better.

Packaging wise this powder is very fuss free. The compact is nice and slim, which makes it very travel friendly. Another plus point about the packaging is the fact that the lid is lined with a full mirror. On top of that, the pan size seems fairly generous: it takes up the entire area of the pan. But looks can be deceiving: this powder contains 9 grams of product whereas Too Faced’s Primed & Poreless contains 10 grams.

What Bourjois promises this product will do is several things. It promises to give your skin a natural glow and a 10 hr matte finish. It also boasts having fruit extracts to help nourish the skin. The texture should be fine and melt into the skin. It contains kaki/ sharon fruit for hydrating purposes and yuzu fruit for anti-shine. In short, this powder should do everything a powder should do and then some.

Thankfully, Bourjois prints the ingredients of their products on the product themselves (another plus!). The fruit extracts can be found in the list of ingredients but are all the way at the bottom of the list. So how much is actually in there, may be questionable. The main ingredient is talc and also kaolin is quite high up the list. Other than that, there’s a lot of ingredients I do not know much about, as well as perfumer listed halfway through.

The powder itself looks quite yellow in the pan. It has no shimmer, and just looks like your standard pressed face powder. Since this has some color to it, I was curious to see what this would look like on the skin.

First time for swatches! The powder has a finely milled texture, but I do think my Too Faced powder was even more finely milled. The color match on my hand is pretty good: you can barely see the swatch on the back of my hand as the color is barely noticeable. It nicely fills up the lines of my hand as well, leading, hopefully to a poreless and even finish.

Before – After

Can you tell a difference? It’s there, but it’s very very minimal. So the Healthy Balance powder certainly lives up to the claim of a natural, glowy finish. You can also clearly tell, especially on my nose, that this powder mattifies your skin very nicely. The brightness of the concealer is toned down ever so slightly by this powder. Since it does have some color to it, it will change the color of your concealer. Overall, I think my skin looks even more even than after applying base.

Full face

I kept the rest of my make up quite light that day, as it was super warm. This powder holds up nicely throughout the day as well. I find I need little to no reapplication of this to take away extra shine. Even on the hot day on which I took these pictures! My only gripe about this product is the fact that it is easily overapplied. A little goes a long way with this, but once you go there, there is no turning back and you end up looking like a caked up mess. So be careful to knock off any excess powder at all times.

Conclusion? I love this product! I am currently about to hit pan as we speak. This has become my current daily face powder and I will simply keep on using it until I use it up. I hope to do so before my skin turns winter pale: since it’s got some color to it, I find this to be too dark for me during winter time. But that is the only downside to this powder apart from it having a tendency to become cakey. I will most certainly repurchase this at some point in time, but since I have so many powders to try in my makeup drawer, it will be some time before I will get to that.

What face powder are you using?