With Just 19 Ingredients, ORIGINAL Liquid Mineral Foundation Does the (Almost) Impossible

Our clean beauty revolution started in 1995 with the launch of our iconic loose mineral foundation, and now we’re excited to reveal an all-new ORIGINAL. Made with half the ingredients of top-selling foundations,* ORIGINAL Liquid Mineral Foundation Broad Spectrum SPF 20 is a truly innovative, modern formula that is still guided by our decades-long mission to create clean products free of unnecessary additives and packed with good-for-skin ingredients.

A “less does more” philosophy drove the creation of this liquid foundation, and we ended up with a vegan and cruelty-free formula that’s made with only 19 clean ingredients — and still gives the amazing skin-improving benefits we’re known for.

“Foundations are developed with a plethora of ingredients,” explains Gail Boye, Senior Vice President of Product Development. “The ingredients are in there for checks and balance, and you have a lot of dynamics working in an emulsion formula like ORIGINAL Liquid Mineral Foundation.”

Since we wanted to make a clean, minimal-ingredient foundation without the traditional additives and stabilizers that other formulas rely on, we created a unique bi-phase emulsion from a gel phase and a water phase, which were combined to create an elegant formula that feels good and looks good, too. “The role each ingredient plays in the formula is really important,” Gail says. “Because they’re all playing heavy lifting roles — they’re playing two or three parts at a time.”

Our Recipe for Clean Foundation & Healthy Skin

Minerals play an important role in the new liquid foundation (and all of our foundations!). Plus, we’ve included skin-improving botanicals so you get the best of coverage and skincare. Here, Gail breaks down the carefully selected ingredients her team used to perfect ORIGINAL Liquid Mineral Foundation.

Healthy Mineral Complex

“It’s really hard to get a naturally luminous finish with just flat pigments,” Gail explains. “So instead of just using straight pigments, we got our glow from this Healthy Mineral Complex — calcium, magnesium and potassium. They are mixed in with the pigments, but they’re what achieves that gorgeous finish on the skin.”

Olive-Derived Squalane, Peptide & Prickly Pear Extract

“The foundation isn’t just pretty, it also has a lot of skin-improving benefits,” Gail says. These benefits mainly stem from two key ingredients: olive-derived squalene and peptide & prickly pear extract. “They are the ingredients that are most responsible for the reduction in redness, pore size and hydration. These really work in harmony.”

According to Gail, the olive-derived squalane serves as “the backbone of the formula”. “It gives it that beautiful silky feeling,” she continues. “And we used the vegan squalane to help mix the pigments into the formula for a beautiful enriched look on the skin. It also works in sympatico with the skin, so even after you take your foundation off, it’s still working to nourish and soothe and hydrate.”

By attracting moisture to the skin, the peptide & prickly pear extract helps to combat redness and pore size. “It helps to make the functions of the skin better and gives an optimized environment for skin health,” Gail explains.

Mineral-Based SPF

“My favorite ingredient is the mineral-based SPF,” Gail says. “Any chemist will say that it’s extremely difficult to get a color-true read with a lot of mineral SPF. You can get around this by using chemical sunscreens, but at bareMinerals we don’t do that. We use a certain type of titanium dioxide that allows us to get these beautiful, very skin-true shades, so there’s no white cast with this mineral-based SPF.”

Babassu Powder

“Babassu powder works to give the formula its texture, along with the olive-derived squalane,” Gail says. “This ingredient helps give the body of the formula. It maintains the overall texture and viscosity and helps it to glide on for optimal spread and blendability.” (Babassu is a palm tree, native to the Amazon, in case you aren’t a skincare ingredient obsessive!).

Featuring 88% naturally derived ingredients, our brand-new ORIGINAL Liquid Mineral Foundation Broad Spectrum SPF 20 is now available in bareMinerals boutiques and on bareMinerals.com.

*Based on the average number of non-colorant ingredients for 20 top-selling foundations, NPD U.S. Makeup Sales, Jan-Dec 2019.

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