20 Beauty Brands That Have Inclusive Shade Ranges For Darker Skin

The beauty space has come a long way and credit has to be given where it is due. There was a time when you'd find it virtually impossible to find a solid clean beauty brand, and it was even harder to find one with an inclusive shade range.

Inclusivity in the beauty market has been an uphill battle. It is alarming to think about how limiting the options were only a few years ago. With rising activists in the beauty space, and an increasing demand for brands to not take the easy route and dedicate the extra time and funds needed to ensure they launch a respectable shade range, things have definitely been improving.

The fact that we were able to select 20 beauty brands with inclusive shade ranges for darker skin speaks volumes, as finding 10 would have been a challenge only a few years ago. It has definitely been an important battle in the beauty space, and more and more brands are heeding the call and making sure that base product releases consist of 20 shade options, at the very least, with a vast enough gradient to help those with darker skin tones find their shade with ease. Here are 20 of the amazing options on the beauty market today that offer products to give you flawless skin that matches your own.

Why not start off strong with one of the most popular inclusive beauty brands right now? When Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty, it was a sensation, immediately selling out countless products with formulas that quickly earned it a top spot in Sephora. As the brand continues to branch out into body care and skin care, the iconic original launches remain unmatched fan favorites. 

The Pro Filt'r Soft Matte Longwear Foundation has been praised highly for its formula, but what is especially impressive about it is the inclusive shade range. With 50 shades available and a vast selection of undertones, there is a shade for everyone. It certainly also helps that the soft matte formula offers climate-adaptive technology that makes it sweat-proof, while still feeling weightless on the skin. One Fenty Beauty reviewer shared how easy it was to find her perfect shade match online, writing, "I've never had a foundation match so perfectly! It's almost too perfect! Amazing foundation!"

Discussing inclusive shade ranges simply wouldn't be right without mentioning one of the first brands to actually offer them. MAC Cosmetics is an OG makeup brand. Before the beauty industry began taking inclusive shade ranges seriously, it was one of the only brands that offered shades for every skin tone because it targeted professional makeup artists who had a need for them.

There was a time when MAC's Studio Fix Fluid Foundation was one of the only foundations with a wide shade range (63 shades!). Luckily, there are plenty of additional options today, but Studio Fix Fluid remains a classic.

MAC's shade range, which is available in a selection of either cool, warm, or neutral undertones, extends to almost all of the brand's base products, including blushes and bronzers. This makes MAC Cosmetics a brand you can always rely on to have your shade, no matter your skin tone. 

Anastasia Beverly Hills is known for being a pioneer in the eyebrow industry. Backed by the Kardashians, Anastasia Soare is the unrivaled brow queen, and the brand is a trusted eyebrow staple for many. As Anastasia Beverly Hills began delving into other makeup avenues, the brand's ability to excel was repeatedly proven with eyeshadow palettes and highlighters. But where the brand surprised everyone was with how vast of a shade range it offered when launching the Luminous Foundation.

The waterproof foundation gives skin a natural glowy finish while still being long-wearing and feeling weightless. The formula is definitely a hit, but the inclusive 50-shade range is especially impressive. From fair to deep, Anastasia Beverly Hills has managed to provide a balanced spectrum of shades, and this same effort was maintained when it came to the Magic Touch Concealer, which offers 25 shades.

The brand continued this commitment to inclusivity when launching the Powder Bronzer, which is available in the shade Mahogany for deeper skin tones. It turns out it's not only in the eyebrow realm where Anastasia Beverly Hills can cater to everyone's needs.

Ever since Selena Gomez launched Rare Beauty in 2020, a number of the brand's products have earned a moment in the spotlight. The Soft Pinch Liquid Blush and With Gratitude Dewy Lip Balm are standout products, but not enough is said for the effort Rare Beauty put in when it came to its base product shade ranges. 

The brand released the Liquid Touch Weightless Foundation, which kicked off its debut with a bang as it featured 48 shades, a rare feat for a new brand's initial launch. The natural foundation feels weightless on the skin while providing buildable coverage. The launch was paired with the Liquid Touch Brightening Concealer, which also consisted of 48 shades, ranging from light to deep, with an impressive selection of varying tones in between.

Rare Beauty's commitment to providing inclusive shade ranges continued with the launch of the Positive Light Tinted Moisturizer. While only available in 24 shades, the formula's ability to adapt to various skin tones still makes it easy to find a shade that works.

Bobbi Brown Cosmetics is an OG beauty brand that has loyal customers who repurchase the same iconic products again and again. This is, in part, due to how well the products perform given the fact that Bobbi Brown is a world-renowned makeup artist herself. She created the brand with skin health being top of mind. With the brand's base products, you're definitely guaranteed products that not only make your skin look great at the moment, but also help to improve it over time. And that experience is available for everyone, thanks to the brand's inclusive shade range.

The Skin Long-Wear Weightless Foundation is a long-lasting buildable coverage foundation that feels breathable with a matte finish, and the extra light to deep shade range is available in over 40 shades. While the vast range is easy to select from, the foundation makes things even easier by being skin-true and undertone-correcting, which allows it to adapt to your natural skin tone.

When a makeup artist as legendary as Pat McGrath launches a beauty brand, expectations are high. Somehow, Pat McGrath Labs has managed to consistently exceed them. Being a woman of color herself, McGrath placed heavy emphasis on ensuring that her brand had a vast shade range. 

Speaking about existing shade ranges in the beauty market to Fashionista, McGrath explained, "I just remember as almost a child shopping in department stores and seeing all of these beautiful colors and then they never worked on my skin, or they were too bruise-y on pale skin." So when it came to Pat McGrath Labs, McGrath delivered with the Skin Fetish: Sublime Perfection Foundation, which consists of 36 shades and various undertones. The lightweight foundation works as a skin tint, so it is easier to match it to your exact skin tone than full-coverage foundations.

McGrath seeks to deliver inclusivity in every way by making sure that even her team is diverse. "Working with girls of every skin tone is so important, because if you don't show the looks on all sorts of skin tones, how do you even know what you can buy, what suits you, what's right for you?" she told Fashionista.

Clinique is more commonly known for its skincare, and understandably so. The brand has released staples during its lifetime, which have become cult classics — some of which are even featured in the occasional "Sex And The City" episode. That's how you know a brand has lived.

But Clinique has also excelled when it comes to makeup, especially in terms of inclusivity. The brand has launched a few base products over the years, including the popular Beyond Perfecting Foundation + Concealer, which is available in 40 shades. But its most extensive shade range was launched with the Even Better Makeup Broad Spectrum SPF 15. Available in 55 shades, it caters to a large number of skin tones with warm, cool, and neutral undertones. Clinique has made it especially easy to find your perfect match online by featuring unedited photos of real people matching each and every shade to help you find the one for you.

Estée Lauder's Double Wear Stay-in-Place Foundation is a makeup icon for a number of reasons. You simply can't beat its level of full coverage. With 24 hours of wear, this foundation will not budge and the oil-free formula keeps shine at bay. While its extreme longevity and coverage are its biggest selling points, the Double Wear Foundation's inclusive shade range is an added bonus as it gives everyone the chance to try it, no matter their skin tone.

The Double Wear Foundation is available in 55 shades, from very light to deep. Once you figure out your perfect shade and undertone, the best part of the Double Wear Foundation is that you can rely on it to stay the exact same color without oxidizing throughout the day.

This heavy-duty product is a must-have staple if you need your foundation to last all day through sweat, humidity, and even water — so it's great that Estée Lauder has made sure to provide an inclusive enough shade range for everyone to be able to rely on it.

While the beauty industry continues an attempt to be more inclusive of darker skin tones, not every household name is there yet. This makes it more important than ever to highlight brands that are coming through with an emphasis and focus on darker skin tones. Mented Cosmetics is one such brand that is committed to providing base products that work for darker skin tones. 

As Mented Cosmetics' co-founders KJ Miller and Amanda E. Johnson explain, "We created Mented Cosmetics because we believe everyone should be able to find themselves in the world of beauty, no matter your skin tone. We know you'll love being put first — because when it comes to beauty, no one deserves to be an afterthought." When the brand formulated Skin by Mented, the idea was to provide a foundation stick for darker skin tones that offered a wide range of 16 undertones so that everyone would find their exact match. Mented Cosmetics even offers an online quiz to help you find your exact shade; you can even book a complimentary Complexion Consultation where the brand's specialists can help you find your perfect match. 

When you think of Morphe, the brand's iconic eyeshadow palettes likely come to mind. In fact, Morphe gained the majority of its fan base because of those large eyeshadow palettes and because of its makeup brushes. The products offer amazing quality at a price point that won't break the bank. Over the past few years, the brand has branched out into lip products, setting sprays, and even base products. 

The general rule of thumb is to not expect more affordable beauty brands to provide inclusive shade ranges, which is why it was so impressive when Morphe launched the Filter Effect Soft-Focus Foundation with 40 shade options. The hydrating foundation provides an airbrushed soft matte finish while giving providing up to 12 hours of waterproof and transfer-proof wear. The vast shade range offers a gradient of options, with each shade group providing either a golden, peach, pink, olive, or neutral undertone. This ensures that there's a perfect match for everyone.

If you've spent any time at all in the beauty social media space, you've definitely encountered your fair share of Il Makiage ads. The brand very quickly became Insta-famous and went viral with its unique approach to foundation, which is to customize it. Using responses from a short questionnaire, Il Makiage produces a version of the 50-shade range Woke Up Like This Foundation that is perfect for each individual's skin type and needs.

The Woke Up Like This Foundation has been called the most-reviewed foundation in the U.S., with over 700,000 reviews, 460,000 of which are 5 stars. The full-coverage foundation promises to smooth your skin out with an effortless streak-free application that gives you a traceless natural matte finish. One of the many 5-star reviewers raved about how easy it is to find your shade without even swatching in person. They wrote, "I have very hard skin to match. Even in the store I usually end up getting matched to the wrong shade. I was so surprised when it arrived and was a perfect match! It lasts throughout the day and looks great!"

Aptly named brand Beauty Bakerie first emerged on the makeup scene with a baking powder that quickly became a holy grail for many. Since that first product launch, founder Cashmere Nicole has placed a lot of importance on inclusivity in the beauty space and the brand has never been shy about tackling the disparities in the beauty world and beyond by demanding accountability and calling out discrimination. 

Naturally, when Beauty Bakerie launched the Instabake Aqua Glass Foundation, it delivered an inclusive range of 30 shades. Beauty Bakerie's website even has a short quiz you can fill out to help you figure out your right shade, as well as a helpful graphic comparing the shades to other existing foundation shades you may already own and trust. While the shade range is great, the foundation's formula itself is equally as impressive. It promises a glass skin effect while still providing a soft matte finish that gives you a full-coverage blurred-out result. A unique combination that doesn't really exist anywhere else in the beauty market.

You're not likely to find a brand that advocates quite as strongly for inclusivity in the beauty space as UOMA Beauty does. The Nigerian-born, London- and LA-based indie beauty brand is committed to being the most inclusive Black-owned beauty brand. Founder, CEO, and Creative Director Sharon Chuter is known in the beauty industry for her mission to redefine inclusivity in the beauty market, and the Say What?! Foundation's 51-shade range is definitely a step in the right direction.

UOMA Beauty provides a shade-matching service on its website to help shoppers easily discover their perfect undertone and shade combination. And the brand has been doing a lot more than just delivering inclusive shade ranges with its products. It also just recently released a collection called Celebrating The Beauty Of Black and will be donating 100% of its net proceeds to the Pull Up For Change Impact Fund To Support Black Founders.

When a beauty brand is a professional makeup artist staple, that's usually a good sign that you're going to find products with inclusive shade ranges. Cover FX is one of those trustworthy makeup brands that doesn't bother with gimmicks and just simply provides solid makeup. 

When it comes to bases, the 30-shade range Cover FX Custom Cover Drops have been a holy grail pick for quite some time now. The drops are versatile and can either be used as a standalone foundation or mixed in with other foundations to increase coverage. You can even turn your favorite moisturizer into a tinted version by adding a few drops or use them to customize the shade of a foundation you've always wanted to try but wasn't available in a shade that worked for you.

The brand also has two other standalone foundations, each with 40 shades available. The inclusivity doesn't stop there. Since Cover FX is designed for professional makeup artists, the brand also offers a wide shade range of blushes and bronzers that complement darker skin tones. 

The drugstore beauty market can be pretty limiting when it comes to inclusive shade ranges. More and more emerging brands are trying, but the sad truth is that most loved drugstore brands provide limited options. The exception is NYX Cosmetics. The brand is a drugstore favorite both for its high-quality affordable products and its ability to repeatedly churn out dupes that actually work. 

NYX Cosmetics has a fair amount of base products, but the most popular one is the Can't Stop Won't Stop Full Coverage Foundation which went TikTok viral for its impressively long-wearing full coverage formula. The foundation comes in 45 shades — unheard of for a drugstore brand.

NYX Cosmetics also maintains an inclusive shade range throughout its base products. The brand even has a dupe for the previously listed Cover FX Custom Cover Drops: the Total Control Pro Drop Foundation. The product works in the exact same way and is available in 30 shades.

There aren't many beauty brands on the market that have emerged from the Middle East, but Huda Kattan's huge influence has made the brand Huda Beauty the success it is. It's crazy to think that the brand started out by simply selling false lashes, and is now most popularly known for its eyeshadow palettes and foundation. Coming from a multicultural background herself, Kattan wasn't messing around when it came to inclusivity. 

The #FauxFilter Luminous Matte Foundation is available in 39 shades, and the Huda Beauty website provides a service that helps you figure out your perfect shade by comparing the range to other existing foundations you may already own. The foundation itself is a unique crossover between a glowy and matte foundation. It somehow manages to give you full coverage and a long-lasting matte finish while still letting a bit of inner glow shine through for a blurred radiant effect. The foundation is also available in stick form and also offers a 39-shade range. 

As we've acknowledged at this point, makeup brands targeting professional makeup artist kits are always the ones to turn to for inclusive shade ranges. Make Up For Ever's product range is very clearly intended for pros, with each product providing an impressive range of colors and shades to play with. 

Back in the day, Make Up For Ever's HD Skin Foundation was on everyone's wishlist. The buildable coverage foundation remains a staple for many, even after the brand's rebranding. With a range of 39 shades available, Make Up For Ever has ensured that everyone can enjoy this holy grail foundation. The HD Skin Foundation makes shade matching even easier by using a micro-skin system that allows the foundation to sync to your skin and give you an undetectable finish. 

The brand is very consistent with offering inclusive shade ranges for the majority of its products. Fan-favorite Matte Velvet Skin Liquid Foundation is available in 38 shades, and the HD Skin Matte Velvet Powder Foundation recently launched with 32 shades.

Of course, liquid isn't the only form of foundation that people turn to. For many, mineral powder foundation is what works best for their skin type and desired finish. BareMinerals has been the original mineral makeup provider for quite some time now. While the brand has definitely evolved from only providing mineral powder makeup, the Original Matte Loose Mineral Foundation Broad Spectrum SPF 15 remains the most inclusive mineral foundation on the market with 30 shades available. 

As bareMinerals ventures into more liquid foundations, the brand maintains inclusivity as the Original Liquid Mineral Foundation Broad Spectrum SPF 20 is also available in 30 shades. The brand's website also provides a shade-matching service where a short questionnaire can be filled out to figure out the perfect match for your skin tone. BareMinerals checks off a lot of boxes, as one of the few clean mineral makeup brands to take shade inclusivity seriously. 

If you are an OG beauty product lover, you will never forget the days when Milani's Luminoso Blush reigned supreme. The drugstore brand has always been highly coveted for its high-quality formulas at affordable price points. Over the years, Milani has had a fair few product releases that went viral. But even the Luminoso Blush can't compare to how obsessed everyone was (and still is!) with the Conceal + Perfect 2-in-1 Foundation & Concealer.

The foundation is considered by many to be the best full-coverage foundation you can get at the drugstore. One satisfied Ulta Beauty reviewer raved, "I had people thinking in my pictures I had a filter in & when they saw me in person were asking if I had airbrushed my foundation...I was impressed." 

With a shade range of 45 options, Milani is definitely another great drugstore alternative for inclusive shade ranges, which is especially important when it comes to full-coverage foundation as you really can't get away with anything but your precise shade.

Ah, what would the drugstore beauty space be without e.l.f.? It doesn't get any more affordable than e.l.f., and luckily the brand has never compromised on quality either. Whether it's your go-to brand for insanely low price points or for its neverending commitment to producing dupes that work just as well as the high-end counterparts, e.l.f. is a must-try. Fortunately, the brand's consistently wide shade ranges also make it a brand that everyone can try. 

For a drugstore brand to provide the Flawless Satin Foundation at the very low price of $6 and still manage to come out with 40 shades deserves a round of applause. Not only did e.l.f. come through with the numbers when it comes to inclusivity, but as you glance at the shade range you immediately notice how balanced and fair the gradient is. Sometimes a brand will release a vast shade range, but you can immediately tell that only the last 10 shades are actually intended for darker skin tones. The brand even made sure that its viral Tarte Shape Tape dupe, the 16Hr Camo Concealer, was available in 23 shades.