When you're in a department store and looking at all the different shades of make-up you may be interested in buying, you don't want to be too hasty and choose one without at least swatching it first - right?
The red you're obsessed with may just not be your shade, and nobody wants to come out of the unforgiving department store lights looking bright orange in the natural daylight.
Well, one beauty guru has warned against using testers in shops, and there's a disgusting reason behind it, and once you know what it is, you'll be thinking twice before using the communal testers.
Pamela Pedrozaa, who posts on TikTok as @pamelapedrozaa, used a petri-dish to grow bacteria from different testers in a Sephora store - and the results will shock you. Of course, the results would be similar for every store.
After just two days, the cultures from the Fenty Beauty blusher, and the Charlotte Tilbury lipstick were completely filling the petri-dish full of white and green bacteria cells.
In the comments, people were horrified at seeing it with their own eyes, admitting that they knew testers wouldn't be the most hygienic, but seeing it for themselves was "gross", with someone even admitting they suspected a tester had made them "sick" before.
Someone wrote: "This is why I only use testers on my hand."
Another said: "You should do a version where you collect the samples after they 'sanitise it' to see if they actually have less or no bacteria."
A TikToker commented: "Someone took a tester and applied it directly to their kid's face at my work. I was stunned."
Some people that worked in make-up retail were insisting people don't use the testers on their faces, with one saying: "And then people get mad at us when we tell you to not use it on your face!"
Would you use testers on your face? Let us know in the comments.
