27 comments

What is BB Cream??

Posted by & filed under Other / Canada.

bb

For those of you who fol­low beauty trends, you might have noticed this one at your local cos­met­ics store: BB Cream.

I first heard about it when a friend of mine sent me a ran­dom text and told me to Google it! And accord­ing to Wiki, BB Cream is a foun­da­tion with addi­tional bonuses such as being a primer, mois­turiser, sun­block, pore min­imiser, & skin food. So basi­cally, it’s a prod­uct that makes your skin flaw­less! Not a new con­cept, might I add.

Being sus­pi­cious, I never ran out to the  beauty counter to buy a bot­tle of this skin per­fect­ing serum. After all, how do I know what I’m putting on my skin if the label is not even writ­ten in Eng­lish? Then again, even if I read the label of a well-known brand of foun­da­tion, I wouldn’t even know what half the ingre­di­ents are any­way! So maybe it doesn’t matter?

Since I was near the Asian beauty counter, I did man­age to ask the cost of the BB Cream and it was def­i­nitely less than $40 for a decent sized tube!

Now, brands such as Smash­box, Clin­ique, Too Faced, etc. have jumped on the BB Cream band­wagon! They’ve rebranded this Asian makeup prod­uct, put them into smaller tubes, and slapped a HIGHER price tag on it!

Just click here to see all the brands that a store like Sephora has to offer. And note that even though we’ve been on par with the Amer­i­can dol­lar for a while now, these prices DO NOT reflect what’s in Cana­dian stores. For exam­ple, the bot­tle of Smash­box BB Cream is $50CAD, not $39USD, as stated on the web­site. :(

I’m curi­ous to try it to see if this prod­uct lives up to their claim. How­ever, I refuse to pay $50+HST since I know that I can get it else­where for a lot less.

It seems that a lot of other peo­ple are curi­ous too and don’t mind pay­ing the hefty price tag ’cause the creams are either sold out/low on stock when­ever I pop in.

If you’ve heard of this prod­uct, have you pur­chased a tube of BB Cream? If so, is there any dif­fer­ence between this prod­uct and a high-quality foundation?

27 Responses to “What is BB Cream??”

  1. JESSICA

    I’ve actu­ally been using BB cream for a num­ber of years now. How­ever, I’ve only been using Korean brand BB creams (as there are tons) because I find that they match my skin tone (as I am Asian).

    I’m not sure how the non Korean brands qual­ity are though.

  3. Jenny

    It’s much lighter than an actual foun­da­tion but it also gives less cov­er­age. I like it because it oxi­dizes enough to blend into your skin so it doesn’t look like you have any­thing on. If you buy it from eBay, then it’s around $10 which is an amaz­ing deal.

  5. Anon

    Just wanted to men­tion that is really just foun­da­tion with extra ingre­di­ents in it. I really wouldn’t look at it like all in one like most bb creams claim to be. I use it more than nor­mal foun­da­tion for barely there, a bit bet­ter than just bare skin cov­er­age. Even though the bb stands for blem­ish balm orig­i­nally tar­geted for peo­ple with prob­lem skin, it actu­ally causes a bit of a break out on me! Go figure!

  6. Camrose

    I just got into it myself and I love it. It suits my needs. I have com­bi­na­tion skin, I don’t really need much cov­er­age and I hate foun­da­tion because I find it cakes. BB Cream is basi­cally like a tinted mois­tur­izer, offers less cov­er­age than foun­da­tion so very light weight. I like how it just smoothes lines out and min­i­mizes dark spots and red areas. Gives my skin an even com­plex­ion. As for a magic serum though? I doubt it. But it con­tains high SPF which is great for pre­ven­tion of wrin­kles and dark spots. In my books, definently worth the cost (I buy the Korean ones which is like $25)

  7. Hellen

    Yes, in Sephora Canada items are more expen­sive than those in Sephora Amer­i­can web­site. But if you buy some­thing from Amer­i­can Sephora web­site, you have to pay ship­ping cost about $10 plus taxes. So $39 USD can be some­how equal to $50 CAD ina Cana­dian Sephora store.

  9. st

    i’ve been using it for years. it’s pretty awe­some.
    it seems like it gives a light cov­er­age, but it evens out my skin tone, and gives me pretty flaw­less look­ing skin while look­ing like i don’t even have foun­da­tion on.
    but no make up is worth that much. it might be dif­fi­cult to find shades for non-asian skin from the orig­i­nal brands, but it’s well worth it.

  10. Melissa

    There is a brand called Lioele that has an amaz­ing BB Cream. I bought one for me (25yrs old) and one for my mom (52 years old). We both LOVE it. It goes on lighter,but as you rub it in (with your fin­gers seems to be the best) it blends into your skin. Gives great coverage,no need for a con­cealer any­more!! I love it. I have the reg­u­lar Lioele BB cream,but there are others,but mine was only 18$. Its a Cana­dian web­site as well! I am very impressed! http://www.liliesshop.net I would highly rec­om­mend this prod­uct. The price is great com­pared to oth­ers and the prod­uct is incred­i­ble. I’d say any­one inter­ested, check it out. You can buy sam­ples of them in a good sized tube for very cheap and see how you like it.

  11. miya

    I’ve been using Skin79’s bb creams for two years now and I love it! There’s def­i­nitely less cov­er­age than reg­u­lar foun­da­tion but it’s enough to smooth out my com­plex­ion and doesn’t cake. I also love that it’s only around $20 and lasts a long time.

    I found this review to be very help­ful for choos­ing which bb cream would suit your skin type & tone best :) http://www.frmheadtotoe.com/2010/12/huge-bb-cream-overview-reviews-swatches.html

  12. Lin

    I’ve been using BB cream for about 2 years now. I love it! Well, it totally depends on what brand you use. I have sen­si­tive and com­bi­na­tion skin so I use “Dr. G” a Korean brand. A right BB cream doesn’t cause break out. BB cream tex­ture is much lighter than foun­da­tion, pro­vid­ing a very thin layer and nat­ural look­ing. If you’re look­ing for medium cov­er­age, then don’t use BB cream. You’ll be totally dis­ap­pointed! But for peo­ple like me who wants light tex­ture to brighten my skin­tone, this is what I need. You can buy it from SASA.COM. I apply BB cream every­day, only BB cream, no more foundation~

  13. Akezia

    Mar­celle cos­met­ics is com­ing out with their BB cream next month. The price is $22.95. I’m pretty sure you can buy it off of their web­site now.

  14. beauty combat

    hi , i have a beauty blog and you can see more infor­ma­tions about bb cream in my blog http://www.beautycombat.blogspot.com it s in french but there is a trans­la­tor , bb cream are great but believe me don t buy an expen­sive one because occi­den­tal brands pro­pose a tinted cream not a bb cream if you want to try bb creams the real ones the best ones are from korea , go to e buy and look for small ones 10 ml because it s very dif­fi­cult to find the good colourthat will suits you you can also go to http://www.prettyand cute.com and order a small set of skin79 or lioele that will cost you less than 20$ , some gret brands : skin79 , mishaa, lioele , han­skin , today i have a post in my blog about the the bb cream set from lioele.

  15. minimusiclover

    I bought a Mis­sha 50 g for $16 off of ebay. It def­i­nitely doesn’t give per­fect cov­er­age, but it is lay­er­able. It doesn’t feel like you’re wear­ing any kind of foun­da­tion, it’s just like, well, skin. It feels like skin when you touch it on your face too plus you barely need any. The kinds you buy can vary so you should always search for what you need. There are anti-wrinkle, whiten­ing, etc. You might also want to test a few shades if it’s pos­si­ble for you. Some peo­ple say that the one they bought is too dark or too light. It will give your skin a slight grey tint though, but it goes away after it oxi­dizes. But you should make sure you do your research too. Some of the BB creams just don’t work and don’t do what their sup­posed to. Good luck find­ing your BB cream! :)

  16. olliedar

    What about the ingre­di­ent list? Does it con­tain parabens? I am try­ing to stay away from prod­ucts with parabens and am get­ting rid of all my Bath and Body­work prod­ucts because of it.

  18. Mandy465

    The eBay ones said they had light­en­ing prop­er­ties, I defi­antly could do with­out that

  19. sarah

    I buy my bbcream from this site called momo­mango and they ship to Canada. I haven’t tried nonko­rean ones so don’t know how they are dif­fer­ent. I really like the skin­food ones from korea, espe­cially the peach sake bbcream that’s avail­able at http://www.momomango.com.

  21. Kimmy

    estee lauder has bb creams out now at sears and the bay. you have to BLEND it, and they will become your skin tone.…

  22. lisa

    Why are Cana­di­ans putting up with so much more expen­sive cos­met­ics and skin­care items in Canada? I under­stand that it is the local Cana­dian dis­trib­u­tors who mark up the price, and they con­tinue doing so because we con­tinue buy­ing. I notice that the Euro­pean brands like Dior and Chanel are priced closer to the U.S. prices. Is there some sort of web­site where we can peti­tion against these ridicu­lously higher prices?

  23. Funkymunky

    I’m def wait­ing for Marcelle’s one for $22 :) the down­side of Asian-based brands that most of them are for very fair skin tones, and the dark­est tones are either still too light or too yel­low for Cau­casian skin, esp peeps like who tan/fake bake. So I’d rather be able to go into the store and try them before order­ing online!

  24. Stephania

    I was just at Sephora today. Sales­girl said that Smash­box is the only brand that has BB Cream in Canada. All the other options are avail­able in the States/if you order through Sephora’s online store.

    I scanned the ingre­di­ents list of the Smash­box BB Cream and I didn’t see any parabens. HOWEVER, there were lotsa “-cone” on the list which means that it con­tains a bunch of silicones.

    Not sure if this is bad for you, but Sephora’s primer (w/ sil­i­cone) did cause me to break out.

    I scanned another list of ingre­di­ents, on an Asian brand, and it con­tained TONS of parabens!

  26. joline

    I love Sephora, but as stated above, it irri­tates me that their prices online for the Sephora Canada site do not truly reflect what the prices are that we will be pay­ing. Fur­ther to that, you have to add ship­ping to many of the items, despite if it says that ship­ping is free over $50 (this usu­ally only applies if shipped to an Amer­i­can address). We usu­ally end up stock­ing up when we go to the states, which we get to do about once a year (we are not close to the bor­der, nor are we close to a city in the states close to a bor­der that would have a Sephora).

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