This is Part 2 of my deep dive into my most recent Chanel purchases. Today’s focus is on the foundations specifically.

I’ve praised the N°1 de Chanel across several posts, but never officially reviewed it. So, I will do so today and showcase the newest shade I own in that line, along with discussing my newest purchases: the Water-Fresh Tint and Water-Fresh Complexion Touch.

N°1 de Chanel Red Camellia Revitalizing Foundation in BD91, BD101, and BD121

This has been my holy grail complexion product since the beginning of 2024. I had dry to normal skin when I lived in Florida, but over there I could still pull off wearing soft matte and natural finish foundations. When I moved to Germany, my skin required way more hydration due to the difference in climate, and most of my previous foundation favorites didn’t cut it anymore (even ones known for being hydrating).

The N°1 de Chanel is accurately described as a luminous and moisturizing foundation with buildable coverage. Although it still doesn’t look ultra glowy on me, it’s the most hydrating foundation in my possession currently. It looks natural-finish in the beginning, and within an hour my face gets a glow that appears as if it’s my own natural oils (as if I have a normal skin type). As the day goes on, that oil level remains the same and doesn’t get greasier. So, I love it for that reason. I also prefer medium coverage (and up) foundations. So, I can apply a small amount with a brush that isn’t so dense to get easy medium coverage or use my typical foundation brushes and 1-2 pumps for the high coverage I tend to aim for.

This foundation is very long-lasting with minimal transfer, depending on how hydrating my skincare products are underneath. My only gripes are the shade availability options, the added parfum/fragrance, and price. It smells like the typical florals from a prestige fashion house, which isn’t bad, but I would prefer for it to not be there. The scent is quite noticeable as I apply it, but thankfully it doesn’t linger in the air for that long.

I own BD91 and BD121 because they were the only shades that had the potential to work on me that I could buy from reputable discount makeup retailers online. Two years ago, I refused to pay $80 on a single foundation that I could not return, and I was uncertain if BD101 or BD111 would be my best shade. I figured at the discounted price I paid, I could get BD91 and BD121 and just mix the two colors if they didn’t work out. As it turned out, BD121 is a little dark, but the biggest issue is that it’s overly orange on me. Whenever I tried to combine the two colors, I could get the right depth, but it was always a little too warm. So, I eventually started using BD91 only, and would just rely on bronzer to balance it out.

Attempts to pull off BD91 after my trip back to Florida last April left me feeling dissatisfied. This is why I eventually succumbed to my wishes during the holidays and decided to get BD101 from the Chanel website. In the US, shades BD101 and BD111 used to be exclusive to Chanel. Now, they can both be found at Ulta. In Germany, BD111 doesn’t exist and BD101 can still only be purchased directly from Chanel.

BD101 in the N°1 de Chanel isn’t a whole lot darker than BD91, but it is at least closer to my year-round skintone while in Germany. So, I expected BD101 to be my shade in all other Chanel formulas. I didn’t realize the Complexion Touch range runs slightly light!

Chanel Les Beiges Water-Fresh Complexion Touch in BD101

This product is intended to be hydrating, which it is to an extent, but the finish is natural rather than dewy or luminous. It was my mistake for assuming a foundation with “water” in the name would give my skin a shinier or wetter appearance than the N°1 de Chanel, but it does not. On the bright side, the Water-Fresh Complexion Touch has been transfer-proof. I don’t need to use a setting spray with it, nor setting powder. Also, it does not contain parfum.

What immediately impressed me about this formula is how easily and evenly the pigment microcapsules break into the solution. I can squirt some directly on my face and my brush will break and spread the spheres and blend it into my skin in the same amount of time as any traditional foundation would. When I was using the Rose Inc Tinted Serum, I had to pump it out onto the back of my hand and crush the pigment capsules with my brush first for a bit before transferring the product onto my face, otherwise the pigment would not mix into the solution properly and then would not spread evenly on the face. There would be patches of unblended spheres without enough liquid left to move it around.

As seen in the photo below with comparisons to the Rose Inc Tinted Serum, The Complexion Touch is viscous enough that it is slow to drip when I hold it at an angle, but it still feels light and gel-like on the skin, whereas Rose Inc’s is runny and feels watery. They have a lot of ingredients in common, but Chanel’s feels a bit more emollient and contains more pigment. In my example photo, the Rose Inc pump dispensed double the droplet size, but when I rubbed it, it was still sheerer than Chanel’s. Rose Inc’s product is a true tinted serum. The Complexion Touch is more of a lightweight and buildable light to medium coverage foundation, but it can be applied as sheer as a tint if it’s used with a sponge or a less dense synthetic foundation brush. Perhaps it could be built up to higher coverage, but I can’t do that due to the imperfect shade match. It’s better for me to use as little product as possible.

I miss the Rose Inc product a lot, so I really hoped this would fill the void. Unfortunately, BD101 is a bit too light for me. In this formula, it’s slightly lighter than BD101 in the N°1 de Chanel.

Because it’s at least not orange and too dark, I can somewhat pull off wearing this if I bronze up the perimeters, but the whole reason I wanted this was for minimal makeup days. I wanted something that would even out my complexion while being hard to detect on the skin. An ill-fitting shade is a glaring indication that I have makeup on.
Unless Chanel expands the range to include B111, there isn’t another option for me.
The Complexion Touch is technically more expensive than the N°1 de Chanel, at $3.50 per ml vs $2.67 per ml, and yet it didn’t dethrone that foundation. So, perhaps I would not buy another shade even if the brand releases more colors.

This foundation comes with a tiny brush, but it’s too small for me to enjoy using it all over my face. Instead, I’ve used it to apply the Complexion Touch as a concealer under my eyes. I can’t wear my shade alone because my dark circles are so deep that the product looks grey on top of them. However, it did give the Correcteur I mentioned in Part 1 its best results when paired together.

I’ve tried using this as a primer or mixed in with my darker foundations to improve the shade match. Even though this is water-based and some of the combinations were oil-based, that didn’t seem to impact the longevity or change the consistency in a negative way. I was able to successfully get the shades closer to my face color, but unfortunately I kept feeling that every product I used (N1 de Chanel, Rose Inc Tinted Serum, the Water-Fresh Tint, etc) looked better alone than when mixed. For example, when I mixed it with the Rose Inc Tint, it improved the color, but added just enough coverage to prevent it from looking undetectable, while also not managing to give enough coverage for me to like it. Sheer coverage is one thing, but when it’s light coverage, I feel like I may as well try to cover most of my imperfections. I either want a tint that’s so low coverage it just evens out the skin without being able to tell I’m wearing makeup, or having the minimum of medium coverage.

The Complexion Touch has a fair amount of positives going for it, but it isn’t a good fit for me or my preferences.

Chanel Les Beiges Water-Fresh Tint in Deep and Medium Deep

This is the product I should have started with all along. As I mentioned in the previous section, I want either a veil of color to even out my skintone while looking like my normal skin or an imperfection-erasing foundation. This checks the “nearly undetectable” box! It’s perfect for minimal no-makeup makeup days.

Using my barest amount of skincare with the tint, I get a natural finish with the tiniest bit of glow. The second I apply powder products like highlighters, blush, and bronzer, those are enough to mattify my skin and I lose any luminosity. My face then feels mostly dry to the touch, and the tint doesn’t transfer. A single long pump (pushing it down fully) is all I need to create that veil, or perhaps a tiny bit more if I’m using a brush that isn’t dense.

I need to clarify that this tint is water based and also water soluble. Although I don’t get transfer if my face touches something, I still need to wear a primer underneath if I want any chance of avoiding streak marks if I cry or my face gets wet in some other way.

If I use two full pumps (or 4 smaller pumps) to get medium coverage all over my face, I will be able to feel some of the gel residue when I touch my face, and it will have that kind of wet shine that glycerin (and maybe other ingredients) leave on the skin, similar to MAC Fix+ and other hydrating sprays. Thankfully, I can still get close to medium coverage with three small pumps of tint without being able to feel it on my face.

The tint is still self-setting if I use my typical skincare products underneath, though I will get a little bit of shine as the day goes on. If I use my most hydrating skincare, then my face can surpass the glow of the N°1 de Chanel Foundation. If I don’t use setting powder, it will be dewy for quite a while, but even then it dries down on its own eventually. At most, it’ll feel as if I just have a gel moisturizer on. In my skin’s most hydrated state with the Water-Fresh Tint on, touching my skin will transfer moisture to my fingertips, but no actual pigment from what I can see. When I press a white paper towel to my skin everywhere, there is only the faintest hint of color.

There are times when I’m testing a new concealer or eyeshadows, but I don’t feel like putting on a full face of makeup. Products like this are useful to make me feel a bit more put together.
Of course, I can take a fuller coverage product and just sheer it out. However, if I’m already not in the mood to put in much effort, I’m not going to want to mix products together in that moment either.

The Water-Fresh Tint is runny in consistency and sheerer than the Complexion Touch, but the Rose Inc Skin Enhance Luminous Tinted Serum is still even more watery and with lower coverage. The Complexion Touch and Rose Inc product have more ingredients in common, but there are three ingredients that the Water-Fresh Tint shares with Rose Inc’s Serum Foundation that the Complexion Touch does not. That means that there are only 6 out of 28 total ingredients in the Rose Inc formula that can’t be found in either of the Chanel ones. In my eyes, that adds even more credibility to the rumors that Rose Inc took a lot of “inspiration” from Chanel in making their Luminous Tinted Serum.

Also, neither of Chanel’s Water-Fresh products have that cooling sensation on the skin. I’m not a cosmetic chemist, but it’s possible that it’s merely the benzyl alcohol evaporating on the skin, which according to Google, “extracts heat from the surface and causes a localized, temporary cooling effect.” If this is what’s responsible for the amazing feeling I loved from Rose Inc’s Tint, perhaps it’s for the best that the Water-Fresh ones don’t have it.

The Water-Fresh Tint has added fragrance, but it’s less noticeable than with the N°1 de Chanel Foundation. Again, it’s that kind of classic luxury brand floral smell.

Like the Complexion Touch, this also comes with a brush, though I am more willing to use this one all over the face because flat tops lead to such fast applications of products. Still, a bigger brush is my preferred application tool.
With the Complexion Touch, the capsules were so easy to mix in that I could just use my fingers to apply it to my face if I wanted. Although the Water-Fresh Tint’s capsules mix better and more evenly than the Rose Inc Product, and I can apply this to my face like a normal foundation, it takes extra effort with fingers to get the color fully and evenly dispersed in the solution. So, I recommend using a brush.

No online retailers in Germany have the shade Medium Deep. If a color within my expected shade range is unofficially exclusive to the Chanel website, I can assume that one is going to be my best shade match. So, I bought Deep first to try it (and as a potential shade adjusting product). Deep is a little warmer and darker than I am right now. The coverage level reminds me of the Beekman 1802 Milk Tint SPF 43 Tinted Primer Serum, which I also have in the shade Deep. Thankfully, Chanel’s isn’t as dark as Beekman’s, so I believe I can get away with wearing it. However, I couldn’t stop nagging at myself to get another shade too. That’s how I ended up buying the second one.

For anyone curious, this was the gift bag charm for February/Valentine’s Day!

Like I mentioned in Part 1, one of my biggest gripes with Chanel is the fact that, in Germany, my best shade match is exclusive to their website across all of their foundation formulas. Since they almost never have sales or discounts on their own site, that means I have to pay full price if I don’t want to mix shades or to rely on other products to balance things out.

Considering how much I loved the Rose Inc Skin Enhance Luminous Tinted Serum, and its similar formula to Chanel, I think it’s a great alternative for someone wanting to spend less money (provided they have a shade option and it doesn’t oxidize). To clarify, the Rose Inc Tint starts off as my correct shade, but it looks orange in photos and perhaps when I use certain skincare products with it, but I’ve never been able to figure out which ones cause this.
Chanel’s Tint is $72 and Rose Inc’s Tint is $49. Rose Inc’s product does dry down more in the German climate than when I was in Florida. Over here, Chanel’s is more hydrating. So, it’s a bit of a toss up as to which one I like more. Medium Deep was a deciding factor and ultimately having my better shade match tipped the scales in Chanel’s favor.

Medium Deep is a good match, but it looks even closer when I use the Victoria Beckham Beauty Cell Rejuvenating Illuminator in the shade Golden as my primer underneath.

To sum things up, the N°1 de Chanel Foundation gives the most coverage with the most hydrated finish, and has the biggest shade range of the three. The Water-Fresh Complexion Touch has the second-most coverage and shade range, but it’s the least hydrating. The Water-Fresh Tint has the least amount of shades and provides the lightest coverage, but it’s the second-most hydrating.

It’s clear to me that the N°1 de Chanel Foundation is something I will continue to repurchase, and in my correct shade from now on. However, I’d like to bring up the fact that the Danessa Myricks Yummy Skin Tint Foundation was second on my list of most used foundations in 2025. It’s $39 if you live in the US, and it’s the most similar performing that I’ve found to Chanel’s (with Chanel’s being more hydrating). For some reason, Danessa’s is €51 within the EU, but sometimes the retailer Purish drops the price to 50% off.
Just like the Rose Inc product, I feel that this is another excellent alternative.

I technically don’t need any other foundation, but I do like having a nearly-undetectable option too. So, I am glad I bought the Water-Fresh Tint.
It’s only because the two Chanel products are holy grails to me that I am willing to spend so much on them. However, $100 or €85 is my personal limit at which a foundation won’t become worth it to me no matter how amazing it is. For example, I don’t see myself ever buying the €121 Victoria Beckham Beauty Foundation Drops, the €125 Hermès Plein Air Luminous Matte Skincare Foundation, or even Chanel’s €168 Sublimage L’Essence de Teint.
The €75 for my exclusive shade in the N°1 de Chanel Foundation is the most I’ve ever spent, and I’m not so sure I’ll be willing to try any others this expensive again. I was tempted by the Tom Ford Architecture Radiance Hydrating Foundation, which I could have gotten for €68, but I don’t want to purchase anymore foundations with fragrance in them. Chanel is my final exception on that.

That’s all for today! Thank you for reading!

-Lili ❤