Lancome Prep & Hydrate Illuminating Primer Review

Reviewing a luxury brand like Lancome is not something I expected to do on my blog. While I have a few highend product loves, I’m a drugstore girl at heart and tend to focus most of my content on the affordable. But I decided to try the Lancome Prep & Hydrate Illuminating Primer to make up a Debenhams order and this is what I’ll be reviewing for you today.

I have mentioned this primer in previous blogs so you might already know what I think of it but I’m going to do this review as I normally would.

Packaging

The Lancome primer comes in a basic squeezy plastic tube design. It’s perfectly functional, hygienic and allows the right amount of product to be dispersed. It doesn’t look or feel particularly luxurious. While I’m a sucker for fancy packaging, I think you often pay more for packaging when it comes to highend products.

Price

Being Lancome, this primer doesn’t come cheap and retails at £29 for 25ml of product. That’s more than £1 for each ml of product so I was expecting big things. When it comes to products at this price point, I want to love them because I want them to be worth the money I spent but I also kind of don’t because that means expensive repurchases!

Application

The primer comes out of the tube somewhere between a gel and a cream texture. It has a slightly apricot-coloured tone with a faint pearlescent shimmer but applies colourless to the face, leaving behind smooth and glowing skin. Compared to other illuminating primers like the BECCA Backlight, this gives a much softer glow but it’s also a lot more smoothing and weightless on my skin. It’s hard to explain but it takes away the oily shine to my skin and replaces it with a natural glow.

Wear

With or without makeup on top, this leaves my skin looking glowy and smooth. I can’t say whether this gives the 24 hour hydration claimed but it’s certainly a lot more hydrating than other smoothing primers I’ve tried in the past and foundation sits beautifully on top of it. The glow it gives is subtle but it lasts on me and works best for my combination skin than the more greasy illuminating primers.

Overall, I wish I didn’t like this primer so much because it’s £29 but I really enjoy the look it gives to my skin and will definitely continue to use it in the hope I find a more affordable dupe.

Pick this up from Boots here (affiliate link)