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The best natural foundations for conscious beauty queens

Quality without compromise

By Briar Clark

BEAUTYcrew Beauty Editor / September 11 2020

Natural makeup formulations are hard to come by, so when a brand commits to creating a good quality foundation that doesn’t ask you to compromise on your ethics as a consumer, you can’t help but cheer a little – we love a guilt-free base. Plus, the fact that natural formulations are kinder on the skin and embrace naturally-derived, sustainably sourced ingredients is a sweet little bonus too.

Below, we’ve rounded up the foundations that have carved out a special place in our hearts due to their skin-loving formulas and even finer finishes:

KJAER WEIS Foundation

The don of natural foundations, Danish brand KJAER WEIS has a cult following for their luxe, refillable, travel-friendly and pan-style cream foundation compact. Packed full of organic sweet almond seed, coco, and jojoba oils, this super blendable base can be paired with a beauty oil for a more natural sheer finish or applied sparingly to skin on no-makeup makeup days for a refined complexion and a natural soft-matte finish.

VAPOUR BEAUTY Luminous Foundation

We can’t go past a stick foundation; they’re so easy to use and are perfect to throw in your gym bag or handbag for quick touch-ups throughout the day. This lightweight formula offers a light to medium coverage and a luminous finish, but the real magic lies in the ingredients list which boasts a blend of hydrating organic jojoba and avocado oils, organic shea butter, nourishing myrrh oil, and protective, silica-rich bamboo extract.

Ere Perez Oat Milk Foundation

Think of this foundation like a tall glass of nourishing oat milk for your skin. Its skin health-focused formula combines the antioxidant, skin conditioning agent, emollient, and anti-inflammatory powers of oats, with peach extract and vitamin E for a youthful radiant, medium to full coverage finish. Free from parabens, phthalates, propylene glycol, DEA, mineral oil, petroleum, paraffins, synthetic fragrance, nanoparticles, NON-GMO – this is sensitive-skin approved.

RMS beauty "Un" Cover-Up Cream Foundation

If you’re a fan of the OG RMS Beauty “Un” Cover-Up Concealer then let us assure you, the long-wearing cream foundation is just as good as it’s sheer-coverage counterpart, offering a sheer buildable formula, allowing for a customisable level of coverage. We love a versatile queen. The hydrating formula features a blend of jojoba and meadowfoam seed oil, nourishing coconut oil, and antioxidant-rich buriti oil, plus it’s free from nasties, soy and gluten.

Kosas Tinted Face Oil

This lightweight, vegan and oil-based foundation is perfect for no-makeup makeup days, offering a medium buildable coverage and a hydrating, natural-velvet finish. It will leave you looking like a new person at Sunday brunch, regardless of how hungover you may be. The face tint contains avocado oil to replenish moisture, and smooth and nourish skin, while camellia seed oil and rosehip seed oil balance and brighten, and meadowfoam oil plumps and smooths the complexion.

Jane Iredale Glow Time Full Coverage Mineral BB Cream

Technically a high-coverage BB Cream, this glowy offering from Jane Iredale gives you all the skin-loving goodness you’d expect from a beauty balm with the refined finish of a foundation – plus the addition of SPF doesn’t hurt either. Intended for dry and sensitive-skinned folks, this formula is great for thirsty skin and is packed full of natural extracts and antioxidants to help the skin retain moisture, leaving the complexion dewy, fresh and flawless.

Love a bit of natural makeup? This French brand has created the world’s first microplastic-free mascara.

Main image credit: @flammedepigalle

Briar Clark

Briar Clark got her start in the media industry in 2017, as an intern for Marie Claire and InStyle. Since then, her keen interest in fashion and beauty has landed her gigs as a Digital Content Producer and Beauty Editor with titles like Girlfriend, Refinery29, BEAUTYcrew and beautyheaven. She loves the way seemingly innocuous topics like skin care and style have the ability to put a smile on people’s faces or make them think about themselves a little differently. A big believer in self love and experimentation, Briar has made a point of becoming the Australian beauty industry’s unofficial guinea pig for unusual treatments and daring hair trends. When she’s not testing out the latest beauty launches, Briar is big on broadening her horizons, mostly in the form of food but she’s also partial to travelling to new destinations both near and far (and of course, allocating an extra bag to bring their best beauty offerings home with her).