When you’re shopping online for clothes and accessories, you can usually make a decent guess at your size thanks to sizing charts and knowing your own measurements. But are there lines you won’t cross when shopping? Are there items you know there’s no point buying because you’ll never get exactly what you need? Of course there are.

Tools like Brayola are perfect for ensuring you get the right sized bra according to the brands and styles you already know suit you, but what do you use to ensure you get the right foundation colour? The answer is a new start-up called Findation.

The premise behind Findation is very simple: You tell it which foundations you have tried that looked great and precisely which colour you liked. It will then tell you the best possible colour match in another brand. It’s the perfect tool to help you while you’re shopping for foundation online.

Sign Up To Findation

To save your results for the future, you can log in to Findation using Twitter or Facebook. However, this isn’t necessary if you’re just wanting to try the service or get a one-off recommendation. If you’re unsure, log in first in order to save the foundations into the system. If you try to log in later you’ll need to start again.

Find Your Best Foundation Shade

To start off, you’ll enter the brand name of your favourite foundation followed by the exact product and the colour you like best. If your favourite brands or products aren’t there, you can let the Findation staff know that it needs to be added. It’s fairly likely that in the hundreds of brands offered you’ll find at least a few you’ve liked before.

For best results, Findation recommend that you add as many different products as you can, provided that they are all a good match for your skin and that you’ve entered the details correctly. Don’t guess the shade if you’re unsure – go and read the label. Also, don’t enter details for foundations that weren’t quite right. If you wouldn’t buy it again, then don’t enter it.

If you’re only entering details for foundations that are sheer or just tinted moisturisers, you won’t be able to get a good result for a full-coverage foundation. So, make sure you enter at least one full-coverage foundation to your list.

For users who wear a different foundation shade in the winter to the summer, Findation suggests just choosing the one that is best for you most of the year round. That way the suggestions will work for you most of the time.

Findation Results

Once you’ve entered at least 3 foundations, Findation will be able to make a good recommendation to you about foundation shades which will suit you. Each result will have a percentage rating to show how well they think it will match your skin according to their algorithm. The algorithm calculates shade matches using lots of data, including information given by other users.

If you’ve tried a particular shade of a product before and either loved it or didn’t like it, you can help to improve future matches for everyone by clicking the “Tried this” button and giving Findation your feedback.

You can also filter your results to show the best shades for a particular brand. If you’re contemplating a particular product and just trying to narrow down the shade you should buy, then this is ideal for you.

More Recommendation Tools

If you like getting great recommendations, you should also check out these articles:

• Find The Best: A Smart Comparison Engine For Just About Anything
• Skrittle – Find Similar Sites To Those You Love

What are some of your favourite tools like Findation for calculating the exact size or colour of something before you buy? Let us know in the comments!