Cushion foundation

A cushion foundation is a liquid foundation soaked into a sponge — in the original, a urethane foam — and sealed in a compact with a mirror and a puff.^[1][2] You press the puff onto the sponge, which gives up a thin film of foundation, and press that onto the face. The format was designed to carry a sunscreen as much as a foundation,^[1] and most cushions still do.

The difference from its neighbours is mostly in the delivery. The formula inside is a runny liquid foundation — the sponge is what stops it leaking — and the puff lays it down in thin layers rather than blending it out, which is why cushions tend towards light, buildable coverage and a fresh or satin finish. A BB cream or CC cream is sold on what the formula does for the skin; a cushion is sold on how you carry and apply it. It is the one liquid base made to be touched up at a table, in a mirror the size of a palm.

Press the puff into the sponge once, lightly; a firm press floods the puff, and the excess goes on as a streak. Start at the centre of the face and work outward with short pressing and patting movements, never a wipe. The puff’s edge, or the puff folded in half, reaches the sides of the nose and the corners of the eyes.

Build in layers. A single thin pass is a tint; a second, only where you need it, is a light foundation; a third begins to look like a mask. For a touch-up during the day, blot any oil first — pressing fresh foundation onto shine only makes it shinier — then press a thin layer where the base has worn away.

Cushions are sold by finish — “glow”, “satin”, “matte”, “cover” — and it is the most useful word on the pack. Korean shade names follow a common pattern: a number for depth, running up from the low teens for the fairest, with 21 a light shade and 23 a light-to-medium one, and a letter for undertone, N for neutral, W for warm, C for cool. Many ranges are short at the deep end, so check that the numbers reach you before choosing on finish.

A puff goes from face to sponge and back many times a day, carrying skin oil and whatever is on your fingers into the compact with it. Wash the puff often with a gentle cleanser and let it dry fully, or keep a spare; close the lid firmly, so the sponge does not dry out; and use the refills many cushions are sold with once the sponge begins to give up only a patchy film.

A cushion is worth choosing over a bottle of liquid foundation when you want to touch up during the day, when you prefer a thin, fresh layer to full cover, or when you travel. It is a poorer choice if you want heavy coverage in one pass, or if you get through foundation slowly: an opened compact meets the air and the puff every day, and its sponge dries out long before a sealed bottle would. For oily skin, choose a semi-matte or matte cushion for the touch-ups, and press it over blotted skin rather than over shine.

Look for the small open-jar symbol on the pack, which gives the number of months the maker suggests using it once opened, and note the date you start it. Refills make the case for a cushion stronger, since the case is kept and only the sponge and its foundation are replaced. And keep a cushion to yourself: a puff that has been on someone else’s face goes straight back into the sponge you will use tomorrow.

The cushion compact has an unusually well-documented birth. In January 2007 Amorepacific, Korea’s leading cosmetics company, began developing a rival to a balm sunscreen, applied with a puff, that LG Household & Health Care had launched the year before. A balm was easy to carry but hard to spread thinly; a lotion spread well but leaked from a compact.^[3]

The answer was to soak the lotion into a sponge. In the company’s own telling the idea came from a stamp pad — in the version given to the Korean press, the stamp that inks parking tickets without leaking — and some 3,600 experiments on sponges followed.^[3][4] The product, IOPE Air Cushion, went on sale in 2008 as a sunscreen; the technology was then turned to foundation under the company’s HERA and LANEIGE brands. By 2014 Amorepacific was selling 26 million cushion compacts a year in 13 countries, and it agreed to share the technology with Parfums Christian Dior and, in 2015, to license it to LG.^[3]

Its patent did not hold. After a challenge by six Korean companies, including the manufacturer Cosmax, Korea’s Supreme Court confirmed in May 2018 that the key patent — for urethane foam as the sponge that holds the liquid — lacked inventiveness.^[5] By then the format had long since spread beyond the company that made it: the picks on this page run from Korean road-shop brands to a Paris couture house.