Chanel Water-Fresh Tint Shades: Les Beiges and Sheer Tints

In 1913, Gabrielle Chanel opened a boutique in Deauville, the Normandy seaside resort, and started selling sportswear made of jersey, a fabric that had mostly been used for men's underwear. Clothes for the beach, made from a fabric with an unglamorous past. A hundred years later, the Les Beiges makeup line was built on photographs of her on those same sands, bare-faced and warmed by the sun.

That is the story AnOther told in 2013, when Chanel's makeup creative director Peter Philips created Les Beiges, and he chose to leave out bronzer and sparkle. I like that restraint, and it is the best way into Chanel Water-Fresh Tint, which Chanel calls the first water-fresh tint from the house. The brand says the formula is 75 percent water, with pigments held in micro-droplets that melt into the skin on contact, for light to medium coverage and what it calls a radiant bare-skin effect. Les Beiges gives you a tint that sits closer to a drink of water than to a foundation. I went deeper on a related idea in Chanel Makeup: From a 1924 Red Lipstick to the Water-Fresh Glow.

The trick is to apply it the way Chanel describes. Put a little on the back of your hand, use the included brush to break up the droplets, then dab it all over the face or only where you need it. The rest of the first grid is the family around it. Les Beiges Water-Fresh Complexion Touch is the companion base, and the Water-Fresh Blush is the same water idea for the cheeks. Healthy Glow Foundation and Healthy Glow Sheer Powder are the classic Les Beiges pair for more staying power, while the Sheer Highlighting Fluid, Natural Serum Concealer and Fresh Liquid Blush round out the healthy-glow side of the line.

Look at your skin before you reach for the tint. A sheer base is honest, so it shows dry patches more than a full-coverage one. Ten minutes of prep beats another layer of product.

Chanel's skin care is the obvious place to start. Hydra Beauty Micro Sérum is the serum that goes down first, and La Solution 10 de Chanel is the moisturizer that follows, a cream of just ten ingredients made for sensitive skin. Le Masque Camellia Exfoliating Mask is the weekly step, a clay mask and a scrub in one, and I would use it the night before you wear the tint so the base goes onto smooth skin.

Then the small finishing pieces. Baume Essentiel Multi-Use Glow Stick is a multi-use stick, so it can work on the cheeks and wherever else you want a little light, and it travels well. Rouge Coco Baume and Hydra Beauty Nourishing Lip Care are the lip pair, one tinted-balm idea and one care idea. Le Volume de Chanel Mascara and Le Gel Sourcils Longwear Eyebrow Gel finish the face without adding any colour, which is the whole mood here. For the neighbouring ground, there is Chanel Rouge Coco Flash: Shades and How It Wears.

A pairing I like: the Glow Stick over the tint on the high points, and the balm pressed onto the cheeks with a fingertip. It is three products that look like none.

What I would skip: a heavy powder over the top of a water tint. It will flatten the finish you just paid attention to.

Swatch a tint on the side of your jaw, not the back of your hand, and look at it in a window. Your face and your hand are different colours, and daylight is the only judge that cannot be flattered.

If you like the idea of the Les Beiges tint and want to compare, this grid is your shortlist. Sisley Paris's Phyto-Hydra Teint is the hydrating tint from a skincare house. NARS's Pure Radiant Tinted Moisturizer SPF 30 and Laura Mercier's Tinted Moisturizer Light Revealer both bring a lighter, more classic tinted-moisturizer texture, and Laura Mercier's Tinted Blur Balm adds peptides to a skin tint. I also put together DRMTLGY Tinted Moisturizer: The Universal Tint, Plus Other SPF Skin Tints.

Gucci's Glow Skin Tint and Armani Beauty's Golden Hour 24HR Lightweight Skin Tint are the two with a lit-from-within bent, made for a dinner that starts before sunset. ILIA's Super Serum Skin Tint SPF 40 and Estée Lauder's Futurist Skin Tint Serum Foundation SPF 20 lean on serum textures, which suits skin that wants treatment and colour in one go.

None of these is meant to give full coverage. That is the honest trade with a tint: you get skin that still looks like yours, and you accept that your freckles, shadows and a blemish will still be there. Keep a tiny concealer for the one spot you want to hide.

What I would skip: a tint on skin that is freshly exfoliated or sun-irritated. Sheer formulas cling to whatever is rough.

Tap cream blush onto the apples of the cheeks with your fingertip and stop at the hairline. Cream on top of a tint blends easily, and a fingertip warms it so it melts in instead of sitting on top.

Yves Saint Laurent's Make Me Blush Longwear Natural Glow Cream Blush is the compact one, easy to tuck into a bag. Tom Ford's Soleil Sunkissed Liquid Cream Blush is a tinted liquid with a warm, sun-touched mood, and Hourglass's Unreal Liquid Blush is another liquid that goes in with a few dabs. Westman Atelier's Baby Cheeks Blush Stick and Sisley Paris's Phyto-Blush Twist are the stick-shaped options for cheeks, which is handy if a brush is not near.

For warmth, Westman Atelier's Sun Tone Bronzing Crème, NARS's Laguna Bronzing Cream and Dior's Forever Skin Bronze Bronzing Balm Stick all sit on a tint without lifting it. I would put one stripe across the top of the cheeks and the nose, where the sun would actually hit, and blend with the same brush you used for the tint.

That sun-kissed placement is also the point of Les Beiges: it is meant to look like a day outside, not a day in a makeup chair.

What I would skip: a dark bronzer along the hollows of a sheer base. It stops looking like sun and starts looking like shading.

For most people, Chanel Water-Fresh Tint is a good answer if you want your skin to look better and still look like skin. Use it alone on a weekday, add the Complexion Touch in the middle of the face if you want a little more, and finish with the YSL or Tom Ford cream blush for colour. I would put prep first, because a tint only looks as good as the skin under it.

Do not judge it on the first day under office lights. Wear it to a long lunch in daylight and see how it looks at four o'clock. Gabrielle Chanel sold jersey sportswear by the sea. A sheer tint is the same kind of idea: dressed down, and better for it. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together Chanel Foundation, Shade by Shade and The ILIA Skin Tint and Six Lip Tints. If you want to keep going, Fenty Foundation Shades: Pro Filt'r, Soft'Lit and Skin Tints is the one I would read next.