I don't think I've been this excited about a makeup product in awhile - I mean I've loved things, sure, but this foundation is absolutely fantastic. There are a few minor points that I'm not thrilled about, but they have to do with price and packaging - the foundation itself is seriously SO SO SO good!!!

***Purchased by me. Links are non-affiliate. This is not a sponsored post.***

Surratt Surreal Real Skin Foundation Wand, $65/.5oz @ Sephora, Cultbeauty, Net-A-Porter

I blather on quite a bit until I get the the meat and potatoes of this review, so if you don't care about packaging and color matching just scroll to the end. 

When I bought this during the last Sephora sale, I remember thinking the price of this foundation seemed to be pretty reasonable considering it's from Surratt! I realized the reason later...the wand is a 1/2 oz, not 1 full oz like most other foundations. So comparatively speaking, you could say this is a $130 foundation.

The packaging - it's what you'd expect from Surratt...sleek, compact & with the beautiful multicolor purple-ish shimmers at the end. I love that it fits perfectly with the rest of the line! My one small grip here (which is the same I have with other packaging, even skincare) is I wish there was a way to tell how much foundation is left, especially considering the smaller amount of product. 

The brush on this foundation wand is antibacterial. I pictured it next to the Tom Ford Foundation Brush for comparison. When you press the one end, foundation is dispensed through the middle on the brush end. Even though it's antibacterial, I still wipe it off on a towel (a towel-towel, not a paper towel!!) after each use (which is what I do with all my makeup brushes to prolong life between washings). 

2 things about this brush:

1. I don't feel it applies foundation applies evenly. It also seems to enhance pores & other textural issues.

2. No matter the price point, I don't think any brush included with a product will be as good as one purchased separately. Sure it may get the job done, but it won't get done as beautifully as it could. And that's the point...with this foundation I would rather have paid a little more to get a full ounce, and then choose my application method of choice. I REALLY would have liked to see Surratt release a separate foundation brush to go with it!! 

Let's talk color matching!! I bought the foundation in 3 shades, because I was really unsure what would be my best match. I started with Beauty Professor's swatches, and compared them with the color descriptions on Sephora. I thought I would sit somewhere between 3 & 4, but they both looked either more pink or more peach than I usually like. 5 looked nice and yellow, but that's the shade BP uses and I'm usually a shade lighter than her. From looking at the undertone and depth of the swatches, I figured I'd probably have to mix 2 colors. 

I feel like there's a pretty big jump from 3 to 4. And 4 is definitely a tad darker than 5. 

I started with 3 on one side of my face, and 4 on the other. 3 was definitely too light and too pink.  4 was closer in tone, but just a tad too dark. I mixed about 2/3 of shade 4 to 1/3 of shade 3 and that was my match!! 

Or so I thought. 

I wasn't going to try shade 4, but I was really curious because it seemed so much more yellow than the other 2...so I tried it. And here's the thing...4 was a perfect match. Seriously...absolutely perfect and I couldn't tell a bit of difference from my neck all the way to my forehead. This is going to sound dramatic, but it really made me rethink all my other foundation color choices as well as what I thought my undertone was. 

I've always known I was yellow, but I thought I was only slightly yellow, with a lean toward beige/neutral. After much back and forth, I finally decided my neck and face are 2 different colors and tones - an idea probably not lost to many of you, but it really made me scratch my head. I don't know that I've ever studied my neck/face so intently, both with foundation and without. Without foundation, and with a side view, I can see what I thought was the more beige/neutral (ok and a hint of warm) is really sun damage. How can I tell? Because the part of my face that's hidden from by my hair (I usually wear it down) from the sun is definitely the same color as my neck. But that's not a majority of my face so it's hard to see that from a frontal face view. Don't believe me - check out the pictures below...

This is from the pictures I took to show what my skin looks like before I get my BBL & microdermabrasion treatments, as mentioned HERE. Can you see the line? It's pretty distinct, and in person it's even more so. If that's not an advertisement for sunscreen and staying out of the sun as much as possible, I don't know what is!!

So do I match my face or my neck??? I've always thought I had been matching both, but obviously I haven't. Or maybe I've fallen somewhere between, and because I make sure to blend my neck really well not many would notice. At least I hope ha ha.

I was dead set that 5 was my perfect match, so I took it on a work trip. I wore it for 2 days and honestly I didn't like it as much once I had other color on my face. The color products didn't look quite right, and especially at the end of the day I looked rather gaunt and just blah. On a positive note, my redness was covered!! I decided 5 was too yellow, and I needed a bit of warmth. 

I've now settled on 50/50 mix of 4 & 5. I get enough yellow, but also just enough warmth to liven things up and to compliment color products. 

So that's all the blah, blah, blah stuff...how about the actual foundation?!!! 

This stuff is amazing. Seriously, SO fantastic and I'm super duper excited to have it!!! I'm already declaring it a 2016 makeup favorite!!!

I thought I've had skin like finishes before, but this is the real deal. Surreal Real Skin is an absolutely perfect name for this foundation, and describes it to T. It feels like my skin (read: I can't even feel it), and looks like my skin - or rather the skin I wish I had (read: freshly moisturized & not so sun damaged!). 

It's more pigmented than other foundations in my stash, so I end up using less product than I usually do. I'd say generally it's medium coverage and can be built up to a little more than that - it builds up beautifully (thin layers works best). But it can also be sheered out to less than medium coverage as well. It feels somewhere between a lightweight lotion and a lightweight cream when applied. 

As mentioned before, I don't like using the wand to apply Surreal Real Skin (applies unevenly, too heavy and emphasizes texture issues). I've been using my fingers, and it blends so effortlessly that I don't need to use a brush to smooth things out like usual. With fingers, it smooths over pores as if I had used a primer. 

And this foundation has amazing staying power. It lasts longer than any other foundation I've tried, even longer than others worn with primer. I don't even need primer with the Surratt - it's THAT long lasting and only barely starts to feather around my oily bits (but doesn't separate and crack) after a 10-12 hour day. 

This also covers the minor redness around my nose and cheeks really well. Most of the time I haven't found a need to use my Becca unless I'm covering blemishes or I'm extra flushed. 

I love this foundation so much that I've decided to not repurchase the Tom Ford Traceless Perfecting Foundation (I'm almost finished YAY!) like I thought I would. And if I was a gifted writer, I could wax poetic about this foundation all day long!! But I'm not ha ha - so I'll leave you with this: JUST TRY IT.