Although contouring has been the new makeup trend for a little while now, there hasn't really been much in the way of affordable drugstore contour products. Enter the much-anticipated NYX Highlight & Contour Pro Palette, which landed at London Drugs earlier this month (along with a few other contouring products; there's a
draw to win the full range from London Drugs right now!) With four powder highlight shades and four powder contour shades for $27.99 CAD--that's less than $4 per shade!--I thought this had potential to be a dream product for a makeup lover on a budget.
The eight pans are a decent 2.7 g each, roughly the diameter and weight of an Annabelle blush or double the weight of a MAC eyeshadow. Each pan has a small divot next to it so that the pan can be easily popped out and thrown in your favourite magnetic palette. The black palette case isn't the sturdiest but it doesn't feel super flimsy either; I've dropped it a few times and it held up fine. However, after I tried to re-shoot some product photos, I noticed that the clear cover has actually scratched up pretty easily. I wouldn't have noticed otherwise and it's hardly the kind of product I'd throw in my purse, so the durability is not a dealbreaker here.
Just looking at the contouring shades included had me worried: they're awfully similar and lean warmer than I personally prefer. This is disappointing considering that NYX actually makes one of my favourite contouring products, the blush in Taupe.
The shade names are not listed on the palette, but they are given on the
NYX website as (from left to right, top row) Ice Queen, Soft Light, Cream, Nectar, then (bottom row) Tan, Toffee, Sculpt, and Hollow.
Ice Queen does not have as much of a base colour, but has a strong pearly, silver shimmer. Soft Light is a matte, very pale ivory-beige (NYX calls it "nude" but on my skin tone, it's practically white.) Cream is a matte pale yellow. Nectar is a shimmery champagne-peach; it's very similar to MAC Naked, except slightly pinker and less shimmery. Of all the highlight shades, Nectar is the only one I gravitated towards as a highlighter on my NC20-ish skin--Ice Queen and Soft Light are too pale, although Cream might work as a matte brow highlighter.
Tan is a matte medium brown with red undertones. Toffee is a darker version of Tan, still pulling reddish and warm. NYX says this is a matte but it swatches slightly satiny and when I inspect the pan closely, I swear I can see gold shimmer throughout. Sculpt is a matte taupe and the closest thing in the palette to what I like seeing in a contour shade: cool-ish in tone and a little grey. Hollow is a deep brown with a slight red undertone.
The textures of the shades overall are soft, buttery, and very blendable (Sculpt and Hollow are slightly less buttery-feeling though) and the pigmentation is very good across the board.
Here's a comparison of the contouring shades against two of my favourites--can you spot which ones don't belong? The fourth from the left is NYX's very own Taupe blush, which is cooler and greyer than the Sculpt shade to its left. The rightmost shade is Becca Lowlight Sculpting Perfector, which is much more cool-toned.
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| NYX Contour in Toffee |
By the way, here's Toffee close up. I don't know if you can pick up on the scattering of gold shimmer but I'm telling you it's totally there!
Okay, demo time. I used Sculpt in the hollow of my cheekbone. You can see that although there is a teeny natural shadow on the Before side (left), it's emphasized a little bit more on the After side (right). The effect is subtle in the photos but I promise that the difference is much more dramatic in person. I did take photos of applying it, but they turned out blurry, sorry D: For reference, I used Sephora Pro Contour Blender #77 brush to lay down the colour and then used my fingers to blend upwards.
Demo #2: I applied the Sculpt shade to the sides of my nose and up to just underneath where my brows begin. Nose contouring isn't something I normally do but I think the results are a little bit more dramatic compared to the cheekbone contouring above, just because I have such a flat nose. I applied it with a small, fluffy eye brush and blended it with the same brush after passing it over the back of my hand to remove residual product.
Two more faces testing the palette. On the left side, I used Hollow. This is a very dramatic shade for someone around my skin tone and should be applied with a very, very light hand unless your skin tone is deeper. In my case, I laid down way too much of Hollow and blended
a looooot to make up for it. Right side is still using my favourite of the bunch, Sculpt.
Reviewing the NYX Highlight & Contour Pro Palette was a struggle for me because I wanted to love it
so bad. The texture and pigmentation are lovely, and plus!--NYX makes my beloved Taupe blush--but I dunno. In the first place, I personally don't think contouring palettes are necessary unless you are a makeup artist or love doing makeup for family/friends with very different skin tones from yours; you yourself really only need one great shade match and maybe another shade deeper for when you want a really dramatic contour. That being said, there is a lack of variety in the contour shades, which I feel lowers the value of buying a palette. The shades look really similar once blended out, except for Hollow.
The other major problem I have is that the contour shades run a bit warm. I consider the four shades to have more in common with matte bronzers than contour products (and if you ask me, yes there is a difference between the two.) If you are in the market for a highlighting/bronzing palette or just prefer contouring with matte bronzers, then great! You'll like this palette a lot. It doesn't quite hit the mark for me, shade-wise.
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| NYX Contour in Sculpt |
One thing to note is that all of the shades in this palette, plus four others, are available for purchase as singles on the
NYX website (currently not available at London Drugs). If you're really on a budget or aren't into entire contouring palettes like me, this would be the way to go.
Ingredients: talc, polymethyl methacrylate, boron nitride, aluminum starch octenylsuccinate, lauroyl lysine, trimethylsiloxyphenyl dimethicone, dimethicone,, octyldodecyl stearoyl stearate, zinc stearate, phenoxyethanol, caprylyl glycol, tocopheryl acetate. May contain: mica, titanium dioxide (CI 77891), iron oxides (CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499), Red 6 (CI 15850)
Available at London Drugs, NYX: ~$27.99 CAD / 21.6 g total
