If you’re unsure which MAC foundation shade is best for you, you can read more about the MAC shade finder in our foundation match guide. Before we dive into our full list of the best MAC foundations, we also wanted to explain more about MAC foundation shades.

We achieved more even coverage when using a foundation brush, but it still blended nicely with our beauty blender. However, getting this foundation out of the bottle can be a pain. Department stores often have bright or yellow artificial lighting that will change the appearance of your foundation. Extremely lightweight, the foundation gives a satin finish with buildable coverage. Once it’s set, it’ll stay put for up to eight hours. With conditioning agents, emollients and antioxidants, it helps to prevent drying or caking, and can be used all over the face and body.

Here is every bestselling MAC foundation reviewed and ranked from best to worst

However, not all shades are available in all foundation finishes. The Studio Fix foundation has 67 shades, the Studio Fix Powder has 53. Below is a chart that also reveals the different shades across the wider MAC foundation and concealer range, including the new MAC Studio Radiance foundation. The Studio Fix Fluid SPF 15 foundation is a firm favourite for many and we can see why. The consistency is medium, coverage is medium but if you want to, you can build this foundation to make it full coverage.

To help you finally discover which is the best MAC foundation, whether you’ve got oily skin or large pores, we’ve spent the past month putting every bestselling MAC foundation to the test to bring you a definitive guide on how they perform and which is the best MAC foundation in the UK. The thing we were most impressed with this foundation is how well it held. We even ventured out in the rain to see how it would perform. It left our nose slightly oily by the end of the day and it did start to sit in our dry patches around the nose but this was leagues ahead of other entries in this best MAC foundation list. It’s the kind of foundation you could wear to work and a night out without worrying too much about it melting or transferring. Even on oily skin. Buy now from MAC The shade I wear myself is NC15. This is much more flattering to my skin tone and helps to cancel out any unwanted redness over my cheek area. For each foundation, we tested how well it went on and how well it lasted using both The Ordinary Silicone primer, and the Bobbi Brown Face Base cream. We also applied each using a foundation brush, or a damp beauty blender to see which gave the best finish. The number that follows each NC, NW, N or C is simply the colour of each foundation. Sharon, from Sharonthemakeupartist.com explains this perfectly:

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This caused it to look cakey and this cakiness just got worse during the day as it settled in our creases and pores. A flaw that was exacerbated when we added our powder bronzer. While the powder works well with cream products, it doesn’t seem to like being combined with other powder makeup products and it was hard to blend our bronzer out. The letter is determined by your skin tone and the number represents how light, or dark, the shade is ranging from 3 to 60. MAC has said this foundation will last 24 hours but again our oily nose did peek through. Although not as bad as others on this list. We also loved that the foundation didn’t sit on any dry patches on the skin.