AMBIENT™ LIGHTING EDIT – SCULPTURE - £75 / €84
Hourglass is one of the brands I have wanted to try for a long time.
I picked up Ambient Lighting Edit - Sculpture from the Cult Beauty sale. It contains six baked powders from setting powders to bronzers and blushers. It is said that the hourglass powder formula capture, diffuse, and soften the surrounding light, filtering out harsh beams to blur the visibility of imperfections, pores, and wrinkles, leaving skin looking softer, more youthful, and beautifully lit-from-within.
I was super excited to try this as I love using more glowy based face powder formulas.
What you get in the Ambient Lighting Edit palette:
1. Ambient face powders x 2
2. Highlighter
3. Bronzer
4. Blushers x 2
AMBIENT LIGHT POWDERS
In the palette, you get two finishing powders - Dim Light and Diffused Light. Overall Ambient Lighting powders come in 6 shades that are said to give different lighting effect on the skin. ‘Dim Light’, a neutral peach beige that blurs imperfections with the ideal balance of warm and cool tones ‘Diffused Light’, which conceals redness and offers the clarity of the morning’s first rays.
I'm not really sure if the powders are really that magical that they will offer the clarity of morning's first rays, but on the skin, they apply smoothly and give a soft healthy look to the skin. They don't offer coverage but they blur and give the skin more perfected look.
The Dim Light is a peach beige and a bit too dark for me for everyday use when I'm pale, but when mixing with the diffused light the overall colour becomes softer.
The Diffused Light is my favourite. The powder has a neutral undertone and the lightness of the powder goes well with my winter pale skin.
STROBE POWDER
You get one highlighter in this palette called Glistening Strobe Light that is a very warm-toned, light gold with a luminous finish. It is unfortunately too dark for my pale winter skin, so I mix this with diffused light to create overall light face powder.
The Ambient Strobe Lighting Powders promise a sheer base with concentrated ultra-fine micro pearl particles in varying sizes that give off a naturally luminescent highlight to the skin without a heavy metallic finish. I'm a big fan of more natural-looking highlighters, but when using this I wasn't too sure that I could see enough glow on my skin. This could be also because the colour was too dark for me that the shine effect didn't really show through.
Let me know in the comments how this colour translates on your skin!
BRONZER
You get one bronzer in this palette and it is called natural bronze light. Natural Bronze Light is described as a light-medium brown with moderate, warm undertones and a satiny sheen. On my cool skin tone, the bronzer looked definitely warm-toned and very pigmented on me even if the powder is described as semi-opaque with buildable pigmentation and a soft sheen.
Overall the formula is beautiful, applies soft and it has a blurring effect on the skin, but as the colour is a bit too dark for me I can't really give a full review on this yet. At summer time I will definitely revisit this bronzer!
BLUSHERS
Vibrant Flush is a bright, medium coral with a subtle pink undertone and luminous finish. It is opaque with a soft, silky texture. This is a gorgeous blush but it needs a soft hand when applied, on my skin tone I easily apply too much. I really love the vibrant colour and I think this would go nicely with spring and summer makeup looks.
The other blush is called - Mood Exposure and it is a light, rosy mauve with moderate, warm undertones and a satin sheen finish. It has buildable coverage and can be layered on top of other blushers. The texture was silky-smooth, finely-milled and blurs imperfections when applied on the skin. This blush was my favourite powder from this palette. It had gorgeous neutral undertone and it can be layered on top of your other makeup. If I would buy one full-size item from this palette it would be this.
OVERALL
I hope I had purchased this palette year before when it was more catered towards pale skin tones, but otherwise, the formula is beautiful and applies gorgeously even to dry skin. I think this powder palette would be amazing especially for more mature skin as it doesn't seem to dry out the skin or mattify it too much,
