Stila One Step Correct Skintone Correcting and Brightening Serum Review (Holy Grail Product)

This is one of those products that you never knew that you needed so badly (especially as a makeup artist) until you had it in your hands. And this is also one of those products that you’d never realize how good it is until you put it on your face and see how it solves all your color related problems. 

This is stila’s one step correct skin tone brightening and correcting serum. By far, this is the first ever stila purchase I’ve made, and since I’ve never received any stila product as a present before, this is also the first stila product I own. 

Stila isn’t really that popular here in the Philippines and I actually do not know why. I mean Urban Decay and Make Up For Ever are selling their products at similar prices but the two brands are relatively known here, especially among the beauty junkie crowd. If not for news articles and features in magazines, I honestly wouldn’t know that there was a stila outlet in the Philippines… 

It was then when interviews started pouring in and she was asked about her recommendations on how others could achieve the overall glow and radiance her clients had after makeup. She had included stuff like the beautyblender, MAC’s Margin blush, Victoria’s Secret lip glosses, some other stuff and then this product. She was all raves about this product in her interviews, and I was thinking that if this product could work well in an adult video setting (where conditions are harsher *wink wink* ), then it would most likely work well in normal conditions. 

That was when I decided to get this. 

These are the instructions. I usually use my fingers when using this as I think that a lot of foundation brushes eat up primers like this instead of apply them. As in the primer gets sucked into the brush and you virtually can’t apply anything onto your skin, only for so much product to come off the brush once you’re already cleaning it. 

The warning scared me a lot because the swirls looked sooo cute that I didn’t want them to get ruined! O swirls please stay cute and pretty forever and ever kthxbye. 

And for those curious, here are the ingredients: 

For the paraben conscious, please take not that this product contains methlparaben and propylparaben. 

For those who love hyaluronic acid, this product has sodium hyaluronate which also helps in making the skin soft and supple.

And it says here that it’s made in the USA and can be stored for six months. Given that it contains parabens I think it will last for longer…

And here are the promises. I bought this mainly for the color correction part as I have very reddish skin, and as a makeup artist I feel that I am partly saving money by buying this instead of buying three different tubes of color correctors. And also it saves space compared to if I had a tube of green, purple and peach corrector in my storage area. 

What amused me though is that this product also promises to prime and nourish the skin, to minimize pores and to control oil.

This is how it looks like. It may be a big bottle in this photo, but in real life it’s not longer than most smartphones and is more or less is of the same diameter as a giant haw flake. It’s not very big. It’s made of what seems to be flexible plastic which is why it can afford to not make this very thick walled. I mean a lot of you have probably encountered products with really thick walls because it’s made of crystal-like plastic.

This bottle is just 1.0 oz. 

And look at those stripes! Sooo cute! They look like swirls of icing encapsulated in a bottle. 

The sad part though is that once they reach the top there’s already quite a smudgy mess as they get nearer to getting pumped out of the bottle… Oh swirls please stay cute forever huhuhu

It comes with a pump with a tiny hole, and more or less pumps out 0.25mL each time… the product may seem like a lot, but I just think it’s because this product has a fluffy texture straight off the bottle. 

And it’s demo time! 

This is how it looks like fresh off the bottle. It really slithers like a snake regardless of where you pump it or how you pump it. And this ‘snake’ is a hodge podge of green, lavender, and peach. 

The moment you touch it, you’d realize how moist it is despite being thick and un-runny, and once you begin to blend it, a sensation of moisture comes over before the actual product blends. 

This is an arm swatch of three phases– when it’s freshly pumped and you lightly swipe your finger over it, when you blend it slightly on the skin, and when you’ve more or less feathered it out and blended it completely. 

I think in amazon they showed a photo of a beige product to represent what comes out of this tube because I am aware that this looks like a scary lump of goo if you don’t know that this is.

When you spread it, you can more or less see the green and lavender, but not the peach one as it blends with with the skin a lot of times.

You can kind of see, in a subtle way, on how it has changed the whole tone of things from reddish to a more neutral yellowish tone. You can also see that it has aided to make the other dark marks on my face disappear, especially on the forehead. 

What amazed me so much about this product was how it had been of such a big help in dealing with pimple marks. As in a lot of times that I was doing makeup on others, I was expecting to need much more concealer than the usual based on the color of the marks. But after applying this product, even the darkest pimple marks seem to fade even with just foundation alone. It’s not a concealer, it’s not a spot corrector, but it mimics the function of both products in one step. I love how this product is able to neutralize the color of unsightly marks that not a lot of additional base makeup is needed because the end result is less cakier compared to if all the marks had to be dealt with using concealer. This also means that the end result feels more lightweight compared to if a lot of makeup had to be used. 

This also means that you can afford to not use cake foundation or cream foundation and still be able to combat the appearance of a lot of discolorations. As in I was surprised that I was just using liquid foundation and yet I didn’t have to put on concealer on a lot of areas. And on the areas that did need concealer, I only had to pat on a little, and the problems already seemed to get solved on their own. 

This has lessened a lot of the guesswork because I only need to apply this product and I can more or less solve a lot of skintone problems already. Given how I look yellowish in some photos despite being reddish in real life, I think it’s apparent that if you don’t really stare at a person under certain ambient lighting conditions for x days, unless it’s very apparent, it’s not easy to determine the undertones of the person. In general, it has also helped to brighten up the skintone and give a subtle radiance to the person. 

In terms of my personal use, I love that this product truly helped to keep oil away and kept my skin feeling hydrated the whole day. I have really oily skin and it’s always difficult to find products that feel moist on me that don’t feel heavy. As in the usual scenario is when my face is not oily after X hours, it feels very heavy already, like as if all the powder particles on my face are already carrying the oil globules my face had just produced. I have been under the sun with this primer on without any problems. The makeup was still on me even after a whole afternoon outdoors.

This is quite steep at US$35 or for Php2450 when I ordered it from Beautyholic Manila, but for someone like me who really likes to take makeup to the next level, this is a very convenient to use product and it really lends a lot of contributions to correcting undetones and providing brightness and radiance to the skin. It has also made foundation and concealer time easier as I’ve needed less concealer due to its color neutralizing properties. This product is worth it because of all the shortcuts it gives me. 

It truly is a one step wonder, given that I can prime, color correct, moisturize and brighten the skin with one product!

Do you color correct on a normal basis? Please do tell me in the comments box!

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