Review: Lancome Teint Visionnaire Foundation

I intended to bring you this review for Lancome Teint Visionnaire before the product hit the shops, as I've been lucky enough to trial the foundation for the past couple of months. However, I've been suffering from migraines last week and just haven't had time to devote to jotting down all my thoughts and you know how I like a good, thorough review! I also wanted to include lots of images of the foundation actually on my face, but again this would take time to collate them all, basically I've been wearing it since the middle of January and between The Shoe Girl Diaries and Monster High Monday, you'll have seen it in action!
I'm generally quite the Lancome foundation fan, using Teint Miracle and Teint Idole, so was ecstatic to get to try out Teint Visionnaire. It comes in the usual range of 18 shades which I think does a good job of covering the majority of skin colours. I use 005 Beige Ivoire and that was the shade I was sent.
The foundation is contained in a dumpy glass bottle (30ml) with a pump dispenser and a silver plastic lid which contains a correcting cream/concealer. The foundation contains two steps for a perfect coverage and natural finish, claiming to visibly improve skins appearance, reducing imperfections and dark spots, minimising pores and leaving skin looking more refined.  It also contains an SPF20.  
The foundation part aims to even out the complexion, improving the appearance of wrinkles and pores with daily use as it contains LR 2412, the active ingredient used in the Visionnaire skincare line. While the high coverage corrector is enriched with Vitamin CG and claims to immediately reduce the appearance of dark circles, dark spots and blemishes.
So my first impressions packaging wise were that it was rather chunky. Personally I've never been one to carry foundation around in my handbag, but if you were, I think you would think twice about this one. Although it's the size of regular foundations at 30mls, I've been using this every day for at least 4-5 weeks and you wouldn't know to look at the bottle that I'd used any! It's shorter than the other Lancome foundations but very round. I feel like there's a lot of product in there! I do like the pump dispenser, I think it's the easiest and least messy way to apply foundation. The corrector is contained within the lid section and you just flip the cap up and there's even a mirror inside which is quite handy. Again it seems rather cumbersome if you wanted to carry this around and I feel you would be more inclined to with the corrector than the foundation. It is very lightweight plastic, so no issues there but too big for me to carry daily.
When I first looked at the foundation I thought it looked considerably darker than my other foundations in 005. It has a yellowish tan tone which I don't believe Teint Idole or Miracle have. I found this a bit of an issue throughout the trial and will talk about that later. I also want to add that I've since swatched this foundation along with the other Lancome ones I've mentioned and several more brands within my collection. I thought you would be keen to see how it compares against others, you can find that post here. Onto how the product worked for me. I found the pump didn't dispense very much product. Lancome recommend you work from one squirt and add more if you need to. I found I needed two squirts and I applied this to palm of my hands and applied it to my face, like you would a moisturiser. Then I applied another pump or two to the back of my hand and applied this using my Pout Airbrush, buffing it into the skin. This has become my application process for any foundation recently, so I didn't see a reason to discontinue that method. On the Lancome site they recommend you use a foundation brush and buff it into the skin, so that's fine. It feels pretty light on the skin and does indeed give a very natural looking finish. It's dewy and I definitely needed to finish with powder as I prefer a more matte look. Seeing as this is aimed at the older market, I think the finish would work well with those skin types. It's hydrating for dry skins and will not settle into lines.
As I mentioned above though, the colour just didn't feel right for me. On some days the lightest shades in any foundation can be too dark for me, so given that I found this even a touch darker than those, it was too dark. After I finished using Teint Visionnaire, I've gone back to alternating Teint Miracle and YSL Le Teint Touche Eclat in BR10 and I've definitely noticed that those two are lighter than Visionnaire. I've especially noted when I'm editing photos for the blog that TV did look too dark for me (and usually involved me lightening the image slightly to correct that) and that TM and YSL look lighter and more suitable for my complexion. Swatched on my hand here, it looks very dark, remember my hand is a couple of shades lighter than my face.  As for how the foundation worked as an 'anti-wrinkle' product, I have to be honest and say after 1 week I didn't notice any change at all.  After 4 weeks of use, I think I did start to see a difference, but it's a difficult thing to measure.  I did think that when I wasn't wearing makeup, that the few fine lines I do have seemed less prominent.     Lancome recommend using the correcting cream before foundation, but I've always preferred using foundation first and any correcting or concealing product second. This way it means you cover what is still seen instead of wasting product on areas that the foundation will cover anyway. At first I found the correcting cream a little difficult to work with. It seemed quite firm and I couldn't pick up much on my fingertip. Lancome suggest applying some to the back of your hand and working it from there on fingertips into the skin. The warmth of your hands/fingers should make it easier to blend. I felt I couldn't pick up enough to put on my hand and ration from there though! Instead I chose to dab directly from my finger to the skin. After a few days whether me using the pot regularly or just getting used to the texture, it didn't seem to be a problem any longer. The two swatches above show the concealer to the right of the foundation blob.
My skin has had several blemishes over the weeks and I had a very red looking lump next to my nose (not a spot), so I was keen to see how well the cream would work on these. Again the colour was a bit of an issue given that it matches the foundation perfectly and that was too dark for me. However they are seamless together. I used a tapping motion on the blemishes until the product blended into the skin. As it's quite thick, it covers well and does so quickly and I was very impressed with this. I would say it's something you would need to touch up several hours later as by the time I washed my makeup off at night (I usually apply it around midday), I noticed the blemishes had become a little noticeable again. I hadn't looked in the mirror previous to this so can't pin-point exactly when it starts to fade. I also used the correcting cream as an undereye concealer for dark circles. I wasn't as impressed with it here, I found it was too thick and would settle into lines and looked noticeable and/or made me look wrinkly.
Overall I think it's great value for money (£36) as although that may seem expensive, you get two products for that price and both will last ages, plus there's the added 'skincare' element contained. The packaging looks great but isn't the most practical, although I do love the application with the pump.  Had it not been for the colour issues, I probably would have liked the foundation even more, but it was hard to gain a good impression of it when it looked too dark on me.  I personally wouldn't be switching from Teint Miracle to this. I prefer TM for it's porcelain finish and YSL for it's glow and both for their better colour-match.  However I think if you're looking specifically for an anti-ageing makeup (and can get a good colour match) then this is a good product for that which will not emphasise lines while the Visionnaire element is hard at work 'behind the scenes'.  The correcting cream I definitely grew to like.  It's a product that gets results fast with minimal fuss, just tap and set with powder!  This part I would continue using but again it does pose some issues regarding the colour and I've had to spend more time blending when I've been using it with my lighter foundations.  I liked Teint Visionnaire but wasn't blown away by it if I'm being completely honest.  You can visit any Lancome counter just now to get colour matched and receive your free 7 day sample.  Debenhams are currently running a promotion instore of spend £40, get £5 off while online it's 10% off when you purchase two or more beauty products.  Is this something you would like to try?