Foundation, made in Los Angeles
Your skin, in 42 shades.
Skin-first foundation built on warm undertones: golden, neutral and olive, from the fairest skin to the deepest. No grey cast. No orange guesswork.
Why NIAR exists
Most foundation on the shelf was matched on someone else's skin. We started over with ours.
In 2021 our founder spent a summer reading skin. With a spectrophotometer and two shade artists, the team measured 1,260 faces across 19 American cities, from Seattle to Miami, at the jawline, the neck and the inner arm.
What came back was clear. Warm and olive skin carries more yellow and more olive than the shade charts we were sold, and it deepens in very different steps. So NIAR builds every depth three ways, and spaces the deeper shades closer together, where most ranges simply stop.
- 42
- shades, each in a warm, neutral or olive undertone
- 1,260
- skin readings taken across 19 cities
- 16h
- wear tested at 95°F and 85% humidity
The 42
Fourteen depths.
Three undertones each.
Every NIAR shade has a number for depth, from 01 to 14, and a letter for undertone. Tap any shade and the whole range on this page changes to it.
Formula
Built for 95°F, a long commute and an evening that runs late.
Warm and deep skin produces more oil in hot months and pigments faster when irritated. So the base comes first: every NIAR foundation is half skincare, made without fragrance, and tested on real skin by an independent lab in Irvine before a single shade is named.
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2% niacinamide
Evens tone over weeks of wear and calms the post-blemish marks deeper skin holds on to.
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Kokum butter, not silicone heaviness
A light plant butter that keeps the film flexible, so it moves when you smile and never cracks at the nose.
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Pigments balanced for yellow
We tune each shade with yellow and red oxide first, then black last and sparingly. That is why NIAR never turns ashy on brown skin.
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Flash and fluorescent tested
Every shade is checked under daylight, warm bulbs, office fluorescents and a phone flash. No white cast in wedding photos.
Shade finder
Four questions. Your shade in under a minute.
Built from the same 1,260 skin readings our artists use at the studio. Go to a window if you can: daylight tells the truth.
Worn by
Unretouched. Every face below is wearing NIAR.
Tap a shade name to try it across the range.
From people who wear it
"Every range I tried left me grey by four o'clock. O11 Chai matches my neck and my face in the same light, and it is still there after a twelve hour site day."
"I carry thirty NIAR shades in my bridal kit now. Brides from San Diego to Santa Barbara and I mix far less. Under the photographer's flash there is no white cast at all."
"I wore Heatwave Matte through an August afternoon on the Metro and through dinner after. My T-zone gave up long before the foundation did."
"I never thought I would wear foundation. The Skin Tint in N11 just evens out my beard line and the marks on my cheeks. Nobody can tell, which is the point."
The NIAR Studio, Melrose Avenue
Sit with a shade artist for twenty minutes. Leave with your number.
A sunlit first-floor room on Melrose Avenue, with a north-facing window, the full 42 and the artists who built them. Shade matches are free and take twenty minutes. Bridal and occasion consultations run for an hour.
- Tuesday to Friday
- 11:00 to 20:00
- Saturday and Sunday
- 10:00 to 21:00
- Monday
- Closed for shade development
- Where
- Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles. Street parking on Melrose and Fairfax.
The people behind the shades
A chemist, three artists and a founder who could never find the right shade.
Jerry Niar
Founder. Twelve years in beauty product development before he started measuring skin himself.
Ethan Parker
Head of Formulation. Trained in cosmetic science at the University of Cincinnati, obsessive about wear tests.
Chloe Bennett
Head of Color. Built the 14 depth steps and names every shade after something on her kitchen shelf.
Jessica Morgan
Lead Artist. Ten wedding seasons across Los Angeles, Miami and New York.
Olivia Grant
Studio Lead, Melrose. If you visit, she is the one who will find your shade.
The shade swap promise
Wrong shade? Swap it within 30 days, opened or not.
How do I choose between Second Skin and Heatwave Matte?
Second Skin is a serum foundation with a satin finish and buildable light to medium coverage. Heatwave Matte is our humidity formula: soft matte, medium to full coverage and made for oily or combination skin. Both come in all 42 shades, and the shade codes match exactly.
What does the letter in my shade mean?
W is warm golden, the most common undertone we measured. N is neutral. O is olive, the green-gold cast many warm-skinned faces have that most ranges ignore. The number is depth, from 01 to 14.
Is NIAR safe for sensitive or acne-prone skin?
Every formula is fragrance free, non-comedogenic and dermatologically tested on medium and deep skin, including acne-prone and sensitive panels. We publish full ingredient lists on every product.
Where can I buy NIAR?
At the NIAR Studio on Melrose Avenue and with our partner stores in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston and Miami. Every product page here shows what is in stock in your shade.
Is NIAR cruelty free?
Yes. We never test on animals, at any stage, and neither do our ingredient suppliers. Every formula is vegetarian.
The Shade Letter