These Lightweight Foundation Drops Make Your Breakouts Disappear

There are good skin days and bad skin days — and the latter can make you feel like the universe is personally victimizing you. A pimple. A bout of triggered eczema. An unnamed irritation wreaking havoc on your cheeks. Each has the power to take your mood from a 10 down to a 1 in a beat. So, what do you do? Some might let it, whatever it is, be. Other less patient and accepting people, like me, will try to mask it with makeup. I prefer to not showcase my skin struggle for the public. And until the other day, every foundation, concealer, and BB cream let me down. Then, I met ISDIN Skin Drops.

I'm not typically a fan of foundation drops (although NYX and Clinique offer nice options); the formulas tend to be too goopy or too watery for me. But this is the needle in the haystack. Why? It lets me incorporate my skin-care regimen into my makeup routine without looking like I'm wearing a flesh-colored sheet mask. The BB cream-like formula is pigmented enough to cover just about any skin concern, while also lightweight enough to swirl in your SPF, serum, or daily oil. So your daily concerns get treated while your unpredictable flare-ups get covered.

When I first used the lightweight foundation, I was sure it would appear cakey on my skin, emphasizing the colony of bumps covering my T-zone. My face was in rare form: red, blotchy, and bumpy from a reaction to a new skin-care product. While makeup artist Ashley Mandy mixed the ISDIN Eryfotona Actinica UltraLight Emulsion SPF 50+ and the Skin Drop in Sand onto my face, I sat patiently waiting for the moment I'd hold up the mirror and think, Maybe it will look better in dim lighting? (It never does.) But the moment never came. I could barely feel the formula on my skin. It was nearly undetectable — and so were my skin irritations. I even had SPF on, like super-strong SPF, and there was zero pilling.

And here's the best part: When I looked at myself in the mirror that night, in a dodgy dive bar with possibly the worst lighting in downtown New York, I felt killer.

ISDIN Skin Drops, $52, available at ISDIN.