Na­dine John­son

Q: I am new to make­up and I see some of my friends us­ing cheap make­up and oth­ers us­ing very ex­pen­sive make­up. Which do you think is bet­ter?

M.C, San Fer­nan­do, Trinidad

A: Hi MC – that is a very good ques­tion that is dif­fi­cult to an­swer. From my point of view there is no right or wrong an­swer. What I would say is that it de­pends. It de­pends on the per­son and it de­pends on the make­up. Some peo­ple can take the cheap­est of make­up and do some won­ders. And there have been times when I have bought some re­al­ly ex­pen­sive make­up and have end­ed up giv­ing it away or even throw­ing it away and go­ing back to a cheap­er al­ter­na­tive. Some cheap brands of make­up (in my es­ti­ma­tion) are good. I have used them ef­fec­tive­ly on my­self and some of my clients and the re­sults have been good over­all. There are some oth­er brands that I would not touch with a ten foot pole. How­ev­er, there are some things for you to con­sid­er when you are try­ing to se­lect be­tween ex­pen­sive and cheap make­up.

1 Your bud­get – Let's face it. If your bud­get dic­tates that you can on­ly buy a $12 dol­lar lip gloss and not a $120 lip gloss, well so be it. Try­ing to bank­rupt your­self just so you brag that you on­ly wear X ex­pen­sive brand or Y ex­pen­sive brand just doesn't make any sense. If it aint broke, don't fix it. If you are get­ting good re­sults from a cheap­er brand, then stick with it. At the same time I would en­cour­age you (if you ever have a chance) to try a more ex­pen­sive make­up and see the dif­fer­ence your­self. You might be pleas­ant­ly sur­prised. If you have to ex­per­i­ment, try ex­per­i­ment­ing and buy­ing a more ex­pen­sive foun­da­tion and pur­chase eye shad­ow colours in dif­fer­ent ranges.

2 Where you will use the prod­uct - A good rule of thumb is that you would want to spend more mon­ey on things that come in­to di­rect con­tact with your face / skin. So for ex­am­ple, a more ex­pen­sive foun­da­tion would prob­a­bly be bet­ter than a cheap­er foun­da­tion as foun­da­tion is one of the cos­met­ics that ab­sorbs in­to a fair­ly large por­tion of your skin. And as such you would want to us the best for­mu­la­tion on your face that you can pos­si­bly af­ford. On the oth­er hand, a prod­uct like mas­cara is on­ly used on the lash­es, so a cheap­er drug­store brand will prob­a­bly do just as well as the ex­pen­sive kind.

3 Your skin con­di­tion – if you have prob­lem skin, sen­si­tive skin or even more ma­ture skin, you need to use the more ex­pen­sive prod­ucts which in most cas­es are made with bet­ter in­gre­di­ents and a more rig­or­ous­ly test­ed for­mu­la­tion. The more ex­pen­sive make­up some­times ac­tu­al­ly has in­gre­di­ents that help make your skin con­di­tion bet­ter.

4 The oc­ca­sion – for ex­am­ple, your wed­ding would not be the day that you would want to use cheap make­up. In gen­er­al (but not al­ways), cheap­er make­up has less pig­men­ta­tion and less stay­ing pow­er. And in gen­er­al the more ex­pen­sive make­up tends to be more pig­ment­ed with truer colours.

5 Your ap­proach to make up – Peo­ple who love make­up and love ex­per­i­men­ta­tion would prob­a­bly have to buy the more ex­pen­sive brands be­cause these mega cos­met­ic com­pa­nies pump more mon­ey in­to R & D (i.e. re­search and de­vel­op­ment) and are al­ways com­ing out with new colours, new for­mu­la­tions, in­no­v­a­tive pack­ag­ing etc. The more ex­pen­sive make­up al­so tends to have a wider va­ri­ety of colours and shades that you just will not get with cheap­er make­up.

So in the end analy­sis – you have to pur­chase what works for you and your bud­get. I would how­ev­er en­cour­age you to splurge a lit­tle on things that make a dif­fer­ence, ex­per­i­ment with dif­fer­ent brands and set­tle on the price point that works for you. A good make­up kit is like a trea­sure chest – it has a lit­tle bit of this and a lit­tle bit of that. But in the end it's not al­ways about how much you paid for some­thing, but about how it makes you look and feel.