I've mentioned the Koh Gen Do Aqua Foundation a couple times on the blog now - I talked about it in both my Sephora VIB Sale Haul and my November Favorites. I've had a good month now to test it out, and as you could probably tell from its inclusion in my favorites post, I'm utterly obsessed. I'm never one to use the same base multiple days in a row, but I went a good three weeks using nothing but this foundation. Even now that I've started rotating other products back in, I always find myself going back to this after a day or two.
I had had the Koh Gen Do Aqua Foundation on my wishlist for the longest time. One of my favorite people to watch on YouTube is Karima McKimmie, and she uses it so often in her videos. I noticed how beautiful it always looked on her skin, and it really didn't look like she was wearing a thick layer of foundation. Once I figured out what shade to get, I was sold. The shade names are a bit confusing, being only numbers that don't always go in a logical (to me) order, but after much Googling and looking at swatches, I learned that 012 is the lightest shade (and not 002), and it would most likely be a good match for me. On the Koh Gen Do website, they explain that the shades beginning with zeros are cool-toned, while the shades beginning with ones and twos are warm.
Before I get into it, let me just say that this foundation is beautiful. I don't think I've ever been more impressed with how a base product has looked on my skin. It's quite a thin, water-y formula (as the name might suggest), but it spreads over the skin evenly and easily, and I love applying it with a damp Beautyblender - I don't find that it sucks up too much product. This foundation truly looks like your own skin once blended into the skin - it has that perfect finish that sits somewhere between dewy and matte. I'd say it's a luminous satin. I have mostly normal, leaning on the dry-side skin, and I don't find that this catches on any dry patches. It gives such life to the skin, rather than masking it. I typically apply a sheer layer to even out my skintone, and then I go in with another layer on areas I need more coverage, such as on the redness around my nose and on the acne marks on my chin. It layers up without any caking or lifting away the initial layer.
This could be down to the fact that I'm finally using a primer consistently (this one), but I find it lasts so much longer than other base products on me, too. Typically my skin will immediately drink up a foundation and leave it patchy and expose the unevenness I was trying to cover up, but I haven't had that issue once with this. I'm just so over-the-moon happy that I finally got my hands on this foundation, and I don't have one negative thing to say about it. I even mixed it with a tiny bit of my sister's Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation for a bit more coverage, and it was even more stunning. I think I might need to pick up a bottle of the Luminous Silk myself and use the combo when I get married.
Have you tried the Aqua Foundation? What's the best foundation you've ever tried?