Mac Nc50 Foundation Equivalents

MAC is one of the most popular brands around, but if you don't want to pay full price, there are tons of great MAC dupes out there.

1. Mac Nc50 Foundation Equivalents Maybelline
2. Mac Nc50 Equivalent Fenty Beauty
3. Mac Nc50 Foundation Equivalents Color Chart
4. Mac Nc50 Foundation Equivalents Concealer

Today I try my FIRST Mac Foundation EVER! Watch to see if I loved or hated it. My shade is NC50 and it is a perfect match to my skin and undertone.

MAC Prep & Prime vs Rimmel Stay Matte Primer Do you love MAC's primer? You can get the same. MAC Pro Longwear Foundation. Shop now £27.50. King of the Booth. High coverage, matte finish and budge proof. If those three things sound appealing to you, Pro Longwear has got.

MAC Cosmetics has been a mainstay of the makeup world for decades now, and its products are both iconic and sometimes controversial. After MAC battled claims that they are not entirely cruelty-free, some customers began to turn from their long-loved shades to find new options. Not to mention, a single MAC lipstick will set you back $18.50, which could be used to buy two whole pizzas (or other delicious equivalent)!

Considering all this, I've put together a list of the best MAC dupes around. (All recommendations are confirmed cruelty-free unless otherwise stated.)

For your base:

MAC Foundation Dupes:

We're starting with MAC's most-loved base product: The Studio Fix Fluid SPF 15 ($30) provides an airbrushed matte finish and has notably high coverage.

Mac Nc50 Foundation Equivalents Maybelline

A great dupe for Studio Fix Fluid is the Maybelline Fit Me Matte + Poreless Foundation ($7.99), which is just as long-lasting and shine-free for a fraction of the price. L'Oreal's True Match Foundation ($7.59) is another great option if you're looking for that flawless base.

(Please note that neither Maybelline nor L'Oreal are entirely cruelty-free. Cruelty-free companies include NYX and Milani — see our list of the best NYX products for more on this brand.)

MAC Concealer Dupes:

Makeup artists and average folk alike have raved about MAC's Pro Longwear Concealer ($24) for years, but there are cheaper options on the market. I'd recommend the NYX HD Concealer ($4.99) or the Sonia Kashuk All Covered Up Concealer ($9.98) for a similar finish and amount of coverage.

MAC Blush Dupes:

MAC's Soft & Gentle Mineralize Skinfinish ($34) gives a lit-from-within glow to the face, but you can get the same luminous look from the Wet ‘n' Wild To Reflect Shimmer Palettes ($5.99) or the ELF Baked Blush in Pinktastic ($4), which is my favorite cheap highlighter — it gives such a pretty sheen!

MAC Setting Spray Dupes:

Back in the early days of Youtube beauty gurus, everyone was dousing their face with a generous spray of MAC Fix+ ($26), but now other brands have released their own setting sprays that lock in your makeup just as well. My personal favorites are the ELF Mist & Set ($3.99), which contains green tea and other beneficial ingredients, and the NYX Dewy Setting Spray ($8.50) for the perfect dewy look.

For your eyes:

MAC Paint Pot Dupes:

For eye makeup products, MAC is well-known for their Paint Pots ($24), especially the shades Painterly and Soft Ochre, which prime the lids for intense colors, but if you're not looking to drop $24 on an eyeshadow base, NYX Eyeshadow Base ($7) will prep your lids in the same way. You could also just use concealer on your lids and dust it over with some translucent setting powder for a similar effect.

For your lips:

MAC Lipstick Dupes:

Mac Nc50 Equivalent Fenty Beauty

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And now, the most iconic MAC product of them all — lipstick. MAC has released so many shades that I'm just going to dupe some of the most popular ones here.

Now it wouldn't be a MAC post if we didn't mention Ruby Woo ($18.50). This matte blue-red has dominated the red lipstick market for years, but its formula errs on the drying side.

Mac Nc50 Foundation Equivalents Color Chart

If you want a more moisturizing formula and a cheaper price tag, I'd recommend NYX Full Throttle Lipstick in Up the Bass ($3.49), which has a unique bullet for precise application. A long-wearing liquid lipstick option would be Colourpop's Ultra Matte Lip in Creeper ($6.50), which is slightly warmer than Ruby Woo but just as beautiful.

MAC's Marrakesh ($18.50) is another of their bestsellers. It's a unique deep orange-brown that is currently out of stock, but never fear! Colourpop's Lux Lipstick in Gallop ($7) is a very similar shade and has a nice creamy formula.

I'd say Velvet Teddy ($18.50) is as iconic in the MAC line as Ruby Woo is, and for good reason! It's a beige nude that complements every skin tone, but luckily for you, Wet ‘n' Wild also has a wildly popular nude lipstick, Bare It All ($4.28), for a much lower price. I'll guarantee this will become one of your most-used lipsticks in no time!

Want more dupes?

If you haven't yet, be sure to check out our general list of the best makeup dupes around, with more products that will save you money while giving you the same look as high-end products.

What's your favorite MAC dupe?

These are all of my closest dupes for bestselling MAC products. Comment below with yours!

Tags :dupes, MAC Cosmetics, Makeup

I've been a part of the internet beauty world for AGES it seems. Before the proliferation of YouTube and blogs, there were beauty message boards and LiveJournal. I'm STILL friends with people I used to follow on LiveJournal from back in the early to mid 00s. I was a member in a VERY popular MAC Cosmetics LiveJournal community—this was back when MAC was practically the be-all, end-all in the internet makeup world (my, how things have changed) and practically everything in makeup was MAC-centric especially when it came to describing your skin tone. It was not uncommon, and still not uncommon today to describe yourself as being an NC45 or NW47 or NW58. I even used to use MAC foundations as a reference to help you guys figure out your shades when I would review other brands' foundations. But then some years ago I stopped comparing foundations to MAC. I even wrote a post about it and link to it every time I do a review. But I still get tons of questions referencing a MAC shade, so I figured let me do this post.

Using MAC as a guide can be helpful to a point, but as more and more brands start to expand their shade range beyond Beyoncé beige, it's practically impossible to keep comparing to MAC shades. Why? Because there's no uniform guide anywhere with foundation shades. Some brands are a little heavy handed with the red, some go ham on the yellow, some act like brown doesn't have variations in undertones at all. We beautiful Black and brown women come in all types of gorgeous shades and undertones—some of us might find a brilliant match in a foundation line that tends to go very yellow-based while others in one that goes very red-based. Then there are those of us with neutral undertones (like me). And then many of us tan in the summer—I say this a lot in reviews and other makeup posts, but I don't always simply go a shade or two deeper when I tan, many times I get redder in undertone–so I didn't get 'darker' so to speak but my undertones changed (and not every tan is the same). So I typically would go from my usually N110 in Cover FX to the P110. But even that isn't always going to be an exact science—I can tan a little or tan a lot. Which is why things like powders (I have Cover FX powders in N110, P110, and then I use P125 to contour or bronze) and Pro Foundation Mixers are amazing.

But here's another reason why I stopped using MAC foundations as a guide (aside from times when brands themselves supply them like SheaMoisture did for their Serum Foundation):

Mac Nc50 Foundation Equivalents Concealer

EVERYBODY AND THEIR MAMA IS NC45 OR NW45.

So my thinking behind this phenomena is a bunch of things 1. Some MAC artists were getting really crafty with shade-matching and trying to make their quotas so they put folks in whatever somewhat closely (or in some cases nowhere near as closely) matched their client 2. MAC was the most popular choice of makeup because it's EVERYWHERE (there are a lot of folks out there who still haven't heard of brands like BECCA, Cover FX, or Make Up For Ever) and in some places it's practically the only choice for women with deeper skin tones—I see this a lot when I'm in Europe 3. People were getting shade-matched back when social media wasn't as popping as it is now so you weren't taking a gazillion pictures of yourself and then later looking back on those same pictures like 'OMG, my foundation wasn't matching AT ALL.'

Back when I wore MAC foundation, I wore Select Tint, a tinted moisturizer that made my skin look FAN-FRIGGIN'-TASTIC but I had to buy NW45 and NW50 and mix them together to get my shade. No bother for me because that was my foundation jam back then. Then MAC discontinued it, replaced it with something else that goes nowhere near my shade (as of now—who knows if they'll extend the shades later on), and I moved onto BECCA foundations and then ultimately added on other brands like Cover FX. I haven't even worn MAC foundations (aside from the random review) in probably a decade. I hadn't even had a clue as to what the shade extensions MAC came out with some years ago looked like.

But because I do know how hard it is for us women with deeper shades to find a good foundation can be and because I still get people asking what shade would be an NW46 or whatever in another brand's foundations, I figured I'd put this post together. I wanted to somewhat familiarize myself with the MAC shades again (and get to know the 'newest' ones) and also help more people understand why there can't always be a MAC equivalent to another brand's foundation shade. Especially since I'm going to be swatching a lot of new foundation shades from brands like Hourglass and Anastasia Beverly Hills this month for #SwatchesInSeptember.

Side note: This is also why highlighting and contouring is important for women of color (which I really explained in my Why One Foundation May Not Cut it for Women of Color post) because of the way so many of us are naturally colored. Many of us are lighter in color in the center of our faces and darker around the perimeter—highlighting and contouring is a way to mimic that—and no, it doesn't have to be super dramatic all the time. Because if you were to just put one foundation shade over all those beautiful natural shade variations, it can make you look very flat and in some cases unnatural. It's not about being all one shade when it comes to doing makeup for women of color—it's all about harmony and balance. You'll get a more natural look.

OK so enough rambling—but I hope you did read above and didn't just scroll down to the pics…lol.

(I have no idea why NW50 looks lighter than NW48—unless my NW50 bottle was mislabeled. I do know that NW50 came first before NW48 and maybe they didn't want to name NW48 NW51? I dunno)

I remember wearing NW45 in some MAC foundations and NW47 in others. It's not uncommon to wear a different shade depending on the foundation formula because water content can affect the shade. I don't like Studio Fix Fluid foundation (it breaks me out, I don't like the smell, and I don't love the finish) but I first tried NW45. Way too light. Then I tried NW46. Too light. I tried NW47. A touch too light and off in undertone (NW45 and NW46 were probably off in undertone as well but them being too light was the first dealbreaker). NW48 was the closest match but it still was off in undertone.

To drive the point home about MAC equivalents, I swatched a NW47 and NW48 in MAC alongside some other brand shades that are somewhat close in shade (essentially dark brown colors) but as you can see in the pics, they're far from being good matches for each other.

So how do you make sure your foundation is a good match??!?!

I got you! Check out my Foundation 101 video:

ADDITIONAL READING/VIEWING:

BECCA Ultimate Cover Concealing Creme (full coverage foundation that is pretty undetectable but covers well)

Milani 2-in-1 Foundation & Concealer (another fuller coverage foundation that is pretty undetectable but covers well)

This post isn't meant to bash MAC foundations—if you have a great match and formula from the brand, of course continue to rock it. No foundation-shaming here ;)

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