Alternative to BB Cream

I think lots of you heard about bb cream, or already order them from ebay or ask friends and relatives to bring you over some when they travel to Asia. I just come back from Singapore, and I have heard (and seen some of) the high-end cosmetics companies have set foot into the market which is dominated by Korean and Japanese firms. So this is really 'hot' at the moment!


N.B. FYI, I have seen bb cream from the following companies: Estee Lauder, Lancome, Bobbi Brown, Clinque, Dior as well as MAC


So what's bb cream?


"In a nutshell...

BB Cream is an all-in-one cosmetic beauty and skincare product. Depending on the brand you choose, this cream can act as foundation, concealer, sunblock, and moisturizer all in one go."

quoted from squidoo.com

Therefore, anything that claims to improve our skin, which means tinted moisturiser is kind of the same thing, so why border?

The only reason that I have only one bb cream at home is that when I was in Singapore or HK for holiday, I have tested lots of the bb cream that's available in the market and to be honest, I found all of them too heavy for my taste. This is because most of them have very high SPF, I found any sun screen lotion that has more than SPF 30 too heavy for my skin as I felt I can't breathe though the skin (well, this is just my opinion).... Also, they can turn grey easily and it was quite hard for me to find the right colour (most of them are very pink based or on the other extreme, very yellow based)

Therefore, I have a list of 'alternatives':

The closest match is actually Olay total effect, as there has been lots of good review on Olay's total effect moisturiser and Max factor's foundation. This is the perfect match as it said on the bottle: 'total effects with a touch of MF foundation'. This has SPF15, which is ideal for base. I have used this everyday when I was in Singapore, and with an extra layer of mineral powder foundation, I can go out quickly and that it is moisturising enough for the whole day without suffocated my skin cells.

The 3 at the corner are only available in Asia, sadly. These are from Za, one of my faourite brand. The 2 in front are blend with their beauty powder, which I will explain further in my next review as I have taken the photso ages ago, but just have not got the time to type up the review.

The one in the box is same as the Stila one. These 2 have whitening effect. If you shop in Asia, you will find every single brand with whitening foundation, almost no exceptation. You may ask why Asian people use whitening products all the time? I can say it is due to culture, but I will say it is because our skin tend to be yellowed tone, whitening product does not meant making your face like Michael Jackson, but it is more about even skin tone as well as give the skin a more radiance effect.

Furthermore, although these 2 have not got any SPF, I think these are not bad for an alternative to bb cream, as they claim to have skin improving ingrdients. They are my newly arrive Bourjois 10 hour sleep effect and Bourjois healthy mix foundations. They have been out in the market for ages and I have always heard good reviews about them. But I only managed to purchase them now as I was planning to use £20 to get a good quality bb cream in Singapore, but at the end, I could not find any, as I felt cosmetics in Singapore are quite expensive and that other than Dior bb cream, I really wasn't keen to purchase the rest... so I managed to save £20 and purchase these 2 instead.

So what do you think?

Kyanvi.

p.s. phew... this is one of the longest review I have ever typed in this blog. @@ so please leave me some feedback!

p.s.s. and the one of the left, the white compact is almay line smoothing foundation, which I have wrote about previously: here