The best make-up brands for darker skin

Makeup brands in the UK have historically failed to adequately cater to the diversity of skin tone of the population. We viewed the websites of each brand in the makeup guide and looked at the range of skin shades available for foundation. This wasn’t formally incorporated into our current rating system for companies but was an important issue to highlight.

We looked at each brand’s products for range and whether there were models used for each shade, to help with matching skin tone rather than looking at a square of colour. Out of 49 brands, 26 had a good range of shades for darker skin.

Bourjois only referred to “tanned skin”. One brand, Vichy, even used a photo of a white-skinned model with a spot of its darkest brown foundation on her white skin.

Some of the brands, including the majority of the more ethical options like Beauty Without Cruelty, Dr Hauschka, Green People, Lavera, and PHB Ethical Beauty offered very little or nothing at all for dark skin tones.

Brands with a good range of skin shades were: 17, Avon, Bareminerals, Benefit, Bobbi Brown, Body Shop, Cover Girl, Dior, Elizabeth Arden, Estée Lauder, Fenty, KVD Vegan Beauty, Kylie Cosmetics, Lancôme, L’Oreal, Lush, Make Up For Ever, Maybelline, NARS, NYX, Rimmel, Shiseido, Sleek MakeUP, Too Faced, Uoma, and Urban Decay all had a good range across skin shades. 

For the full table of brands and their range of foundation, go to our makeup guide and scroll to the section on makeup for Black, Asian and Latinx skin. 

What did I find?

Most companies did not clearly show whether a product or shade was appropriate for Black people, dark skin Mediterranean people, South Asian or East Asian people.

The language used to describe shades was often ambiguous, and the vast majority only showed pale shades, or shades for ‘white’ people, on models. ‘Darker’ shades were mostly not shown on models.

Although my research showed that there is a greater variety of make-up choice for BME people with fair skin than those with darker skin tones, there is still a growing number of face products that are suitable for BME make-up consumers.

Leah's research in more detail

1) Companies with the most user-friendly websites for ‘dark skin’.

Best rated: Smashbox (ELC)

This brand was the most user friendly and informative. You can filter products by Light/Dark/Medium/Fair. Each product is labelled with the number of shades available so consumers can determine the likely availability of BME appropriate products - the more shades, the more variety. Each shade is displayed using before and after model pictures.    

Also ranked highly were:

La Mer (ELC) and Estee Lauder (ELC) - whose sites both had a Light/Medium/Deep filter.

Method:

I navigated to the main page of each brand. From there I clicked through to face products. I used filters to try to navigate to BME appropriate products. The ease with which I could do this helped me determine how to score companies for question one.

Companies that provided a link or links that explicitly navigate you to products for BME people were awarded a ‘1’.

Those that made it possible to filter products based on complexion qualified for a ‘2’.

Brands that immediately displayed colour swatches or allowed me to filter results based on complexion also scored a 1 or a 2.

The fewer clicks required to access the information I wanted, the higher the brand scored. 3 (or 4) was awarded to companies that had options for BME products in most (or a minority) of the face ranges but didn’t allow you to filter your search for these products.

Top 5 brands by products available for BME people (2020)

Number of face products found for BME people with ‘dark skin’ (with most shades found of any product).

Fenty: 20 products and 32 shades [2023: 59 shades of foundation]

NYX: 18 products and 24 shades [2023: 8 shades of foundation]

MAC: 15 products and 21 shades [2023: 8 shades of foundation]

Bobbi Brown: 14 products and 28 shades [2023: 43 shades of foundation]

Estée Lauder: 13 products and 31 shades [2023: 60 shades of foundation
     
 

Leah's method:

To investigate this I noted down how many products for the face (foundation, concealer, highlighter, powder, bronzer) were displayed on the website.

For most brands I had to count this on the screen, for some this information was given in brackets next to the ‘face’ drop down.

I used this information to work out what percentage of the brands’ face range catered for the needs of dark-skinned consumers.

I listed every product and colour in the face range that seemed suited to BME people.

Adjectives such as ‘ebony’, ‘café’, ‘cocoa’ made it clear that a product was intended for dark skinned consumers.

Shades for those with lighter skin were usually described with reference to nuts and honey.

The ambiguous adjectives used by most companies often made it difficult to objectively determine the suitability of a shade for BME consumers.

Brands that used less ambiguous descriptors for products and displayed them on a model and/or with a colour swatch made it far easier for me to determine which products were suitable for BME consumers. For example, Estée Lauder uses the categories ‘light’, ‘medium’, ‘deep’ and ‘dark’ as umbrella terms to classify shades.

Companies with fewer shades tended to have less variation, offering less products for darker or the darkest skinned people.