Review: Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Eye Shadow Palettes

Drugstore eyeshadow palettes have a history for leaving us wanting more, am I right? Sure, there are several that hit it out of the park, but you have to go through a lot of toads to find the one.

These drugstore eyeshadow palettes threw me for a loop with their high-end formula! Click through for swatches of the Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Eye Shadow + Built In Primer palettes in Smoky Steel, Classic Nude & Cool Plum | Slashed Beauty

The first I heard of the Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Eye Shadow + Built-In Primer palettes was when I posted about how my friend Heather found one of them to be a good dupe for the Naked Basics palette here. Her description of the shadows intrigued me enough, and the fact that the shades were so close really had me itching to try them.

I got my hands on three of the palettes, which each house four shades that you can get a couple cohesive looks from. Left to right below are: Cool Plum, Classic Nude, and Smoky Steel. Obviously all that look great for fall, am I right?

These drugstore eyeshadow palettes threw me for a loop with their high-end formula! Click through for swatches of the Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Eye Shadow + Built In Primer palettes in Smoky Steel, Classic Nude & Cool Plum | Slashed Beauty

So I’ll be straight up, I was not expecting to be as wow-ed by these as I truly was. The first thing that hit me was the texture. The shadows are incredibly creamy, soft and buttery, so different from what I’ve come to expect out of the drugstore. There were maybe two shades out of the three palettes that were almost too soft (which led them to be more crumbly) but the rest were stars. They blend out and together so easily, making them nice to work with and fun to mix shades from the different palettes.

These drugstore eyeshadow palettes threw me for a loop with their high-end formula! Click through for swatches of the Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Eye Shadow + Built In Primer palettes in Smoky Steel, Classic Nude & Cool Plum | Slashed Beauty

Pigmentation? On point. The texture definitely lends itself for easy product pickup and it doesn’t take a lot of layering to get the shades to their full potential. Even the lighter shades held their own on my tan skin. Smoky Steel definitely had the most color payoff out of these three palettes, and I’m loving the matte black that came in it!

Alright so let’s address the elephant in the room: these shadows are made with a “built-in primer” that claims to make them last up to 12 hours. I have moderately oily lids, and when I wore these with nothing underneath as prep, they had pretty much completely disappeared after 12 hours. With primer though, they stayed put and looked great even after my long day. This would have been cool in theory, but they’re still great shadows that definitely outperform others in my collection so I don’t mind going through my normal prep to make them stick. If you don’t have oily lids, maybe they’d work on their own but I’ll just use them like I use all my other shadows.

These drugstore eyeshadow palettes threw me for a loop with their high-end formula! Click through for swatches of the Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Eye Shadow + Built In Primer palettes in Smoky Steel, Classic Nude & Cool Plum | Slashed Beauty

The Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Eye Shadow palettes go for around $8 in drugstores, which I feel would normally be a bit steep for a quad, but the texture is so similar to high end brands like Urban Decay that I personally think it’s a steal. I’m kicking myself for not giving these a chance sooner!

What has been your biggest drugstore surprise?

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8 Comments

  1. I am pleasantly surprised by this review! I didn’t think these would be so nice… I am very interested in picking a couple of these up now. Thanks for sharing. 🙂 I don’t have a lot of experience with Almay products, so I need to try more of them. 🙂

    1. I was pleasantly surprised by the shadows! I really let out a “what the…” when I saw how awesome the texture was. Thanks so much for visiting!!

  2. It’s so nice when something I normally would probably pass by turns out to be fantastic! Thanks for the review!

    1. Right!? I would have never just picked these up if I saw them in the aisle!
      Thanks for visiting & commenting 🙂

  3. These look really nice. I like the plum quad. I have really oily lids, so I’d probably go with a separate primer for extra insurance.

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