The Budget Guide To No-Makeup Makeup

Call us enablers, but we can pretty much always find ways to talk each other into expensive beauty buys. Tom Ford lipstick? Add it to your online cart. Diorshow mascara? Time to swipe that credit card, friend. But, with more subtle items — a.k.a. products that help you achieve a no-makeup makeup look — we're more likely to balk at a price. Why spend dough on something you can't see? You can do that on the cheap. Right?

That's exactly what we set out to test in this installment of Cheap Challenge. Armed with $30 each, we four beauty editors raided our favorite stores to find products that would make us glow without looking overly done-up. It turns out, no-makeup makeup is a lot harder to shop for and pull off than it seems.

Click through to see (and shop!) our looks. Minimal makeup may be tough to perfect when you're on a budget, but it's doable — and we're here to prove it.