Catrice Prime and Fine Make Up Transformer Drops Lightening

I don’t know about you, but many of the foundations on the market are too dark for my skin tone. Luckily, more and more brands are putting out drop that can transform your foundation to the right shade. Usually there are two varieties available: a lightening and a darkening version. Catrice has come out with both and I decided to see how they worked.

Catrice Prime and Fine Make Up Transformer Drops Lightening

This product falls under Catrice’s Prime and Fine range. This range of products consists mostly of primers and other base products and these drops appear to be a good addition to the line. This is the first drugstore brand that I have seen come out with a product like this. At €3.59 for 15 ml, this certainly beats the only other affordable option I know of. The Body Shop’s Shade Adjusting Drops will set you back €14 for the same amount of product.

The Packaging

Catrice’s Make Up Transformer Drops come in a simple looking tube. This packaging is far from spectacular. What I did notice is that the darkening drops comes in a darker colored tube, while the lightening drops come in a lighter colored tube. Handy, because this way you will never accidentally pick up the wrong one.

The product is dispensed through a very fine opening. Again well thought through by Catrice, because this is just one of those products you don’t want to overdo. Catrice promises that these drops are highly pigmented, which means that a little should go a long way. I have found no problems getting the exact amount I need.

The Ingredients

The ingredients aren’t all that different from your regular foundation. Mica, silicones and color pigments are there. This product includes alcohol, but no perfume and doesn’t have a very obvious smell.

The Swatches

At the top you can see the product as it comes out of the tube. At the bottom I have taken a similar amount and blended it out so you can see the texture. The texture of this is quite thick and powdery. As you can see on the edges of this swatch the product looks very matte where it has dried down.

The shade of this product is fairly yellow toned. It is lighter than my skin tone, but I have a pink to neutral undertone and a too yellow base can make me look ill. It blends in with your foundation quite seemlessly, but I did find you need a little bit more than just a drop of this to truly change the color of your foundation just a little.

Above you can see the foundation combined with the drops. At the bottom you can see the foundation in its natural state. The drops work as they adjust the shade of the foundation. However, rather than lightening the foundation, it brightens is up. To be exact, I find the shade isn’t as much altered as the tone and intensity of the original shade are still there.

With the drops, the foundation becomes more like a highlighted version of itself rather than a lighter version. In addition, the texture of the foundation is altered as well as I needed to use quite some product to get this color difference. I used the Milani Conceal + Perfect in the lightest shade for this text by the way.

The Application

no product – foundation on left – foundation + drops on right

The foundation itself looks just a hair too dark in pictures, but in real life it is about 2 – 3 shades too dark for me. After putting the two versions of the foundation side by side on my face, I hardly notice any difference between the shade. Just that one side looks brighter, but not necessarily lighter. The difference is too minute to see on camera and in real life. The drops simply have too little impact on the actual shade to truly make a difference.

Moreover, the foundation texture was altered because of these drops. I like the original texture of the Milani foundation as it is super full coverage and that is why I bought it. Unfortunately these drops seem to break up the foundation’s original texture and make it less full coverage. Because I had to add quite some drops in order to get any sort of color change, I also ended up with an excess of foundation for one application.

The Conclusion

I’d say that these Make Up Transformer Drops Lightening by Catrice are a pass. They alter the texture of the foundation and once applied to the face there is barely any noticeable difference. This acts more like a highlight than anything else and that was not what I was expecting this to be.

I think it’s because of the yellow undertone and the fact that this may just not be light enough to lighten up the lightest of foundation shades that can still be too dark for some people. Perhaps this does work if you have a darker skin tone than mine and you have a foundation shade that is not ‘just’ right for you and only needs a little bit of tweaking.

However, on my fair skin, this product simply has not enough impact to truly make a difference in my foundation shade.

How do you ensure you have the perfect foundation shade?