REVIEWSDAY: Max Factor Facefinity All Day Primer

I love primer as a concept, and it’s always part of my routine, but I’ve yet to find one that really wows me. There’s lots of heavy-duty primers out there that will make your foundation stick to your face like glue and are great for nights out, but on an everyday basis all I’m looking for is something lightweight that won’t entirely fuck up my pores and that will keep at least some of my makeup where I intended it.

Bearing all that in mind, I was quite excited to try MaxFactor’s Facefinity All Day Primer (£10.99 in Boots, where selected Max Factor products are currently buy 1 get 1 half price), and my first impressions were good. It’s got lovely packaging (I love a glass bottle, although they don’t lend themselves to portability), and it’s got SPF20, which I LOVE – I don’t understand why more primers don’t have this, as they’re intended as a base layer to makeup.

I first tried it out on the back of my hand, roughly 20 minutes after I bought it and while at my desk at work (couldn’t resist). The texture is great; it looks like a cream but feels more like a gel, without the powdery finish that puts me off a lot of primers as I think it feels like the inside of rubber gloves (bit of a niche problem? Perhaps. I regret nothing). It goes on very well also, with a definite blurring/smoothing effect, which was lovely.

However, when I got round to putting it on my actual face, I wasn’t blown away. It’s a nice product, lovely to use, but in terms of actual priming it’s just OK. My skin’s not great at the moment (fuck you very much, season changes) and while the primer didn’t exacerbate any of the dryness or uneven patches, it didn’t exactly do them any favours either. It did keep my makeup on my face reasonably well, but I still needed to touch it up between work and the pub so it didn’t fulfil my heart’s desires in that respect either. I wasn’t super disappointed, and I’ll certainly continue to use it, but I definitely didn’t fall in love.

This is a reasonable primer, pleasant to use and it gets lots and lots of extra points for the SPF, so if you’re just looking for something to help your makeup go on smoother or to use as an extra base without foundation, I think this is a great buy. For me, though, the quest to find a miracle everyday primer must go on to see another day.