Before I start talking about how to get “perfectly balanced” skin, you should know that my natural skin is anything but. I’m not the kind of girl who can put A, B, or C foundation on her face and have it look matte, even, and/or aesthetically pleasing. You can see in the frightening before/after picture below that even with an exorbitant amount of light on my face, my skin is visibly hyper-pigmented, discolored from hormonal imbalances, and well, pretty darn dull. Part of that dullness can be attributed to my Floridian skin’s aversion to the Maine climate– and the rest can be attributed to bad dermatological genes. I, like most women, don’t want to feel like I’m wearing clown paint on my face either, so finding a foundation that feels and looks natural with decent coverage and SPF is the key. I’ve always been a fan of Clinique’s gentle, skin-friendly ingredients, so I jumped at the opportunity to test out their new Superbalanced Silk Makeup Broad Spectrum SPF 15 Foundation.

Since I’m about three hours away from a decent mall, I looked at Clinique’s color matching chart online and ordered three shades of Clinique Superbalanced Silk Foundation– 03 Silk Bare, 07 Silk Sahara, and 08 Silk Canvas. You never know if your best guess will be way off, so even though I’m moderately fair, I still ordered one shade from the Very Fair color group in case the others didn’t match well. As predicted, 07 Silk Sahara was the perfect shade for my Polish-Italian skin tone, and it didn’t require a whole lot of blending upon application, which was nice.

This formula is super light and provides good, buildable, and (most importantly) lasting coverage for women who prefer a more natural, ie not heavy clown paint, look. There’s no pump, so I applied directly with my fingertips instead of a makeup brush, primarily to ensure I wasn’t wasting any excess foundation. With a few spot concealer treatments around my T Zone, I felt completely confident with the amount of coverage provided. My skin stayed matte, oil-free, and pleasantly silky for an entire day of frolicking outside in Camden. Oh, and other added bonuses– Clinique Superbalanced Silk Foundation has SPF 15 in it, and it also photographs very well, which is of valuable benefit to anyone in front of a camera often. All-in-all, it’s really really nice to see a foundation that’s so easy to use and provides natural, balanced, and stress-free coverage with every application. No need to awkwardly check your face on your selfie phone camera anymore.

In case you’re curious how Clinique Superbalanced Silk Foundation compares to Clinique Superbalanced Foundation, I can’t really speak to their differences, so you can/should compare the two on Clinique’s website here.

You can pick up a pretty little bottle of Clinique Superbalanced Silk Foundation online or in stores for $25! What Clinique products have you tried lately– and more importantly, what did you think?

_{Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Clinique through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about Superbalanced Silk Foundation, all opinions are my own.}