Physician’s Formula Bronze Booster BB Cream
Whoever is in charge of Physician’s Formula seems to be totally obsessed with bronzers – there are 34 different TYPES (not shades) listed on their website. Their newest bronzer-related innovation is a “Bronze Booster” Glow-boosint BB cream that supposedly replaces moisturizer, foundation, sunscreen, and bronzer. It sounded to me like it would likely just be a too-dark foundation, but I was too intrigued not to try it out (on sale!).
It comes in two shades – Light to Medium and Medium to Dark – I purchased the lighter version. Texturewise, this is very BB-like, if that makes any sense at all – silicone-y and easy to spread (by the way, props to Physician’s Formula for putting the ingredients online for all of their products). It’s a great texture – it melts into my skin and looks very natural, not mask-like (texturewise; I’ll discuss color below.)
Unblended // mostly blended
Regarding the color; I am not the idea candidate for this type of product, because I rarely wear bronzer on my face, and my face is already a shade darker than my neck. I actually wear a matte bronzer very lightly applied to my neck frequently to get my neck closer to my face in color (along with high-SPF sunscreen on my face everyday to hopefully get my face closer to my neck in color!). So, something that makes my face a bit more bronzed is not great for me, since I’d need to apply it all the way down my neck blended onto my chest to make it look natural.
However, setting that aside, the color of this BB cream does look fairly natural on my face – it’s very yellow-based and does make me look more tanned and not at all orange. (I took before/after full face photos twice, but they didn’t come out either time – sorry about that! I know they’d be very helpful for this particular product). I can see this working well for someone who wants an all-over bronzer and is somewhere in the NC15-25 range (I’m not sure how the undertones would work on cooler, pinker toned faces). If this looks like it matches your skin – I’d eyeball it at around NC42 – 45, but I’m not sure – it might also be a great choice as a regular BB cream. And, since this is the lighter of two shades, it’s possible that the darker version would work as a regular BB cream for some people who have difficultly finding a dark enough one at the drugstore.
So, although I don’t see myself using this often (or really ever), I do think it’s a decent product – though I wish Physician’s formula had just added more shades – both lighter and darker – to their regular line of BB creams (reviewed here) rather than adding yet another bronzing option to the line.