The impressive £6.99 alternative to Charlotte Tilbury’s £39 Hollywood flawless filter

Charlotte Tilbury’s Hollywood flawless filter needs little introduction. There are 12 different shades to choose from and it has been a mainstay in our beauty bounty for as long as we can remember.

Renowned for imparting a serious glow, Charlotte Tilbury’s Hollywood flawless filter is a multi-purpose “complexion booster” – it can be used under make-up, over your finished look, or even on its own for the perfect “no-make-up” look. It is infused with a powerhouse of ingredients that help to brighten the skin, namely porcelain flower extract. And it’s been formulated to give you a pearlescent glow (that’s thanks to the bismuth oxychloride).

As it has been designed to be used under and on top of make-up, it offers a sheer finish, and it blends into the skin seamlessly, blurring imperfections and areas of hyperpigmentation. And take it from us, it certainly delivers.

For application, we use the doe-foot applicator to swatch it across our face before using a damp sponge to blend in – if you don’t have one, we’ve found that using our fingers also works just as well. The lightweight formula works to smooth and illuminate the skin almost instantly and creates a dewy look.

If like us, you enjoy keeping your make-up looks fairly paired back, it works very well on its own. It blurs any imperfections perfectly and leaves your skin looking as though it’s fresh from a facial. Or, if you prefer more high coverage, it looks just as flawless under a full face of make-up, working to add a little extra glow to a finished look.

Not that you’ll need to, because the staying power is very good, but you can also easily top up while on the go by applying as if it’s a highlighter. There’s no denying that it delivers on its promise of catching the light and delivering a serious luminosity.

Having had this in our beauty bounty for as long as we can remember, we’d go as far as to say it’s a cult product that you’ll reach for daily.

The similarities between Collection’s gorgeous glow filter finish and Charlotte Tilbury’s flawless filter are somewhat uncanny. The names are almost the same and Collection’s product features a doe foot applicator that’s almost identical, so naturally, we wanted to see how well it performs.

When it comes to shade range, there are only four to choose from – fair, fair-medium, medium and tan. This is obviously problematic, as lots of people will be unable to find a colour to match their skin tone. We were of the lucky few though and we found our match with the fair-medium.

In terms of formula, much like Charlotte Tilbury’s flawless filter, it’s infused with a number of skin-benefitting ingredients – notably, trehalose for hydration, sodium hyaluronate, which is a derivative of hyaluronic acid and works to relieve dryness, and vitamin E for even more moisture.

In order to give the product a fair test, we applied it the same way as we did Charlotte Tilbury’s flawless filter – swatching the product across the skin with the doe-foot applicator and blending it in with a damp sponge. Much like the high-end alternative, we found that it quickly and easily worked into the skin, which surprised us because the formula looks and feels a little thicker than the Charlotte Tilbury product.

What’s for sure though, TikTok didn’t lie. The results of Collection’s £6.99 glow filter finish seriously impressed us. Without make-up on over the top, our skin looked almost as glowy as it does with the Charlotte Tilbury product all over. As you’d expect, it works just as well under make-up, imparting a subtle glow.

After assessing its longevity, we did notice that it didn’t have quite the same staying power as the Charlotte Tilbury flawless filter, which we’ve found to last for an entire day, but it was still impressive – and we found that it kept us looking glowy for around six hours.