Review: NYX Highlight & Contour Pro Palette

Hi everyone! I got swept into the contouring craze and bought this NYX highlight and contour palette ($24.99) at Ulta. I’ve been testing it for a few weeks, keep reading for my thoughts on it!

NYX’s Website description:

• What it is: Professional palette with eight highlighting and contouring colors.

 

• What it does: Easily allows you to enhance features like cheekbones, nose and jawline.

 

• Why we love it: The removable and refillable pans are perfect for building your own customized pro palette.

 

• How to use: After putting on foundation, apply the deeper, contouring powders to any areas you would like to shade and define. Next apply one of the lighter highlighting colors to any areas you would like to emphasize.

Swatches

Packaging: Love the see through case! It looks fancy to me, and it’s pretty sturdy. You are able to remove each pan if you ever need to replace it. NYX’s website recently added the refillable pans to their website, and there are 12 shades to pick from ($5 each on NYX’s website).

Shades: The top row from left to right consists of a shimmery white/silver highlight, a pale matte cream shade, a pale matte yellow shade, and a shimmery light gold highlight. The white/silver highlight is more pigmented than the gold one, which is pretty subtle. The bottom row from left to right consists of a warm light brown shade (matte), a warm medium brown shade (sparkle in the pan but does not translate on skin), a cool taupe shade (matte), and a deep brown shade (matte).

Pigmentation & Texture: All of the shades are very pigmented, buttery, and finely milled. It takes very little of the contour/bronzer shades for it to show up well on my skin.

Application: All of the powders are easy to apply, but one thing I found with the contour shades is that they were slightly difficult to blend. I lightly touch my brush into them and apply the powder in the hollows of my cheeks for a contour, but it ends up looking harsh because I have a hard time blending it out to look natural. I have tried different brushes with the same problem. A harsh, unblended contour is definitely not a good look! Even when I use one of the lighter bronzer shades to warm up my face, it does not blend very well on me.

Wear: The powders last all day on me but do fade slightly throughout the day. I can still see the bronzer/contour shades on me at the end of a day though.

How I Use the Powders: I like to use either the matte cream shade or matte yellow shade to set my undereye concealer. I don’t notice any significant brightening effects with either of these, but maybe that’s just me. Since the powders are finely-milled and light-weight, they do not make my undereyes cakey or powdery looking. I tend to reach for the white/silver highlight more than the golden one since it’s more pigmented, and also it’s the only white/silver highlight shade I have like it in my collection. One slight letdown for me was the cool, taupey contour shade (3rd shade from the left). I thought it would be the perfect shade for contouring but it pulls a little warm on my skin, womp! Either way I’ll use that shade or the 4th one (sparingly since it’s so dark) for a contour. I’ll sometimes use the first bronzer/contour shade as an all over bronzer to warm up my face-it pulls a little more orange than I would like. I haven’t really used the second bronzer/contour shade.

Final Thoughts

Pros: 8 shades, refillable pans, pigmented, finely-milled, affordable compared to high-end contour palettes (each pan comes out to a little over $3 each)

Cons: Hard to blend bronzer/contour shades, bronzer/contour shades aren’t totally flattering for my skin tone personally

Overall, I do like the palette but wish the bronzer/contour shades were more blendable.

EDIT: I find that the key for using the contour shades is to use a stippling brush-I have a much easier blending out the darker shades this way.

What’s your favorite highlight/contour palette? Comment below! 🙂 Thank you so much for reading!