Foundation Review: Lancome Teint Idole Care & Glow

I think that one of my all-time favourite foundations has been knocked from its winner’s podium: I’ve finally found a longwear makeup base that I love more than Lancome’s Teint Idole Ultra Wear. It’s – wait for it – Lancome’s Teint Idole Ultra Wear Care & Glow.

No, I’m not being facetious: this is an entirely different foundation. It’s fresher and lighter and has a more radiant finish yet still continues to fly the longwear flag. Lasting makeup perfection with an added bit of glow? I’ll take some of that.

Ad info: not paid or sponsored. Contains affiliate links marked . I received the initial product as a test sample but have since purchased.*

Why I Loved the Original Teint Idole

I shouldn’t really say loved in the past tense because I still think that Lancome’s original Teint Idole Ultra Wear is one of the most comprehensive luxury foundation offerings out there. The coverage is brilliant and lasts for the entire day and night regardless of what you’re up to, while somehow leaving your skin still looking like skin and not obliterating all of the life from it. There’s no need for a separate concealer, but neither do you feel as though your makeup is overdone or heavy – no cakiness, no sitting in fine lines, it’s just a flexible-feeling face base that feels far more plumptious and non-drying than it should.

You can read my foundation review for Teint Idole here if this sounds up your street and you’d like to know more.

Why Care & Glow Is Different

The newer Care & Glow foundation adds – and the clue is in the name here – “caring” skincare ingredients to the Teint Idole formula and a dose of healthy, radiant glow to the foundation’s finish. It has slightly less coverage than the Teint Idole Ultra Wear but at the same time feels slightly more buildable and flexible and so it’s easier to double up around the nose and under the eyes if you feel you need a little extra camouflage.

Importantly, Teint Idole Ultra Wear Care & Glow keeps the longwear claim – 24 hour wear – which makes this the perfect switch-up for those who love the original foundation but want more of a radiant sheen rather than the camera-ready matte-velvet finish of the original.

Is Teint Idole Ultra Wear Care & Glow Foundation Better than the Original?

I’m going to go all-in here and say yes. I prefer the newer Care & Glow version. I’ve been wearing it for around a year, regularly, and I have to say that I find it much more versatile than the original, standard version. Though the original is absolutely brilliant for creating a flawless canvas (looks particularly good on film, which is a big part of my working life), Care & Glow just adds the touch of radiance that I think my face needs, now that I’m apparently hurtling through my forties at a speed that I didn’t even know existed.

When it comes to my makeup I don’t want shimmer, I don’t want glittery highlights, I want the fresh-faced “I’ve just taken a jog up and down the canal” look. Because I don’t live anywhere near a canal and even if I did it’s very unlikely you’d ever see me jogging. I just want the skin benefits of the jog. And a gentle jog at that – don’t give me the insanely sweaty look that seems to be all the rage on Instagram, where faces look as though they’ve been oiled and polished to a mirror shine.

My face has never looked that dewy naturally, even when I was nineteen (probably the ten Benson & Hedges a day) and I don’t need it to look that dewy now: what I do need it to look is like I haven’t just spent three years traversing the Arctic surviving on a dehydrating diet of gin and dry crackers. I need to look as though I don’t spend half of the year cooped up inside, typing into my laptop with my knees against the radiator; I need to look like a woman who doesn’t have a diet that’s currently 85% Colston Bassett cheese.

So yeah: a touch of radiance, please, and if I want or need more than that I’ll just dig out a highlighter from my special forgotten things drawer and put it on over the top. If I’d like to go “full robotic” like the people on Tiktok, who look as though they’ve gilded themselves in gold leaf, I’ll take care of that myself. If I want to look as though forty-three snails have raced across my face, in circles then I know how to achieve that and I thank you, Lancome, for not building that in to your Teint Idole Care & Glow.

Teint Idole Ultra Wear Care & Glow Before and After Photos

Some before and after shots for you, just to demonstrate the genius at work; you can see that Care & Glow knocks back the redness around my nose and some of the darkness around my eyes. This was one very light application. Almost a “whisking” of it, if I was going to get all poetic, with a more targeted application in the areas that needed it:

I’ll zoom in so that you can get a better idea – can you see how lovely and fresh the finish looks? The only way I can describe the feel of the foundation is to say “bouncy and flexible” and hope that it doesn’t sound too much like a character from a Carry On film. The addition of the hydrating serum into the formula definitely gives it a wonderful, moisturising feel, but the longwear aspect means that it’s not greasy or sliding around all over the shop. You can trust that once it’s on it’ll pretty much stick in place.

Teint Idole Ultra Wear Care & Glow Shades

When Lancome re-jigged the original version of Teint Idole they changed the shades about and good heavens did it make the long-term fans annoyed. I didn’t find it too much of a struggle to equate my old shade to a new one but I can see how it was an extra admin task that people didn’t want, especially when they’d been using the same foundation in the same shade for years and years. I’m hazarding a guess that Lancome needed to change shade numbers because they added so many new ones, but please don’t shoot the messenger. I’m not even a messenger, I’m a…guessenger.

The good news is that the Care & Glow shades seem to line up quite neatly with the standard formula ones – my 220C is pretty much the same in both. Perhaps the standard non-glow version is a touch darker, but I’m really splitting hairs here! They do a shade match on the Lancome website here but I really like Findation for double-checking my foundation shades online and have always found it to be pretty accurate.

Care & Glow comes in thirty shades but the standard Teint Idole has a whopping forty-five and so it still pips the new one to the post in that respect. I’m just absolutely sold on the juicier look, the bouncier feel and that little bit of extra glow: I don’t think I’ve worn the regular version since I got the new one!

You can find Lancome Teint Idole Ultra Wear Care & Glow at all of the stockists below, if you’re still awake after typing out the product name. It’s £38 but if you’re savvy with the bigger etailers there’s often a code to apply or a little discount running. At time of writing it’s just £28 at Boots here*.