Sephora Color Shifter Eyeshadow Palette Reviews

Sephora recently launched these new “Color Shifter” eyeshadow  palettes. They are $10 each and they come in 4 color variations. Each contains three mattes, a shimmer, and a topper shade. The color selection in them is pretty straightforward and balanced. I haven’t found it difficult to come up with a variety of looks for each  palette.

The packaging was designed to be as recyclable as possible, so they are mostly made of cardboard and metal except for the elastic band which is used to hold the palettes closed instead of magnets. The mirror can slide out of the lid completely and be kept if desired. On the back of the palette there are holes to pop the pans out when you are ready to discard the packaging (BUT be aware that the pans are glued in, so this isn’t meant for rearranging shades). The spine of each palette is color coded with the name so if you stack them together vertically, you can easily grab the one you want.

The mattes are pretty good as far as color payoff and ease of blending but there was a little bit of inconsistency in how they adhered to the skin. I’ll let you know in the comments for each palette below which shades were harder to use. The shimmers in general were my least favorite thing about these palettes because they were drier, sheerer and most of them had larger sparkles that fell out easily during application. The one in the Khaki Illusion palette was the best of them all, being all fine shimmer and adhering very nicely to the skin. The toppers are pretty consistent across all 4 palettes with a flakier consistency and higher shine than the shimmers but a reasonable amount of fallout. I noticed that when I used them on the upper lid, they caused my eyeshadow to crease earlier in the day, so I ended up using them on the lower lashline a lot of the time.

Infinite Nude

The Infinite Nude Palette is super neutral and a good go-to on days when I want to wear “no makeup” makeup. The topper, shimmer and deeper matte are nice to have in here too when I want to kick it up a notch.

The most challenging shades to use in this one were the shimmery nude and the medium matte brown. The shimmery nude, swatched on the bottom right, was a little bit dry and didn’t adhere well when applied with a brush, resulting in lots of sparkle fallout. The medium matte nude adhered a little too well to the skin and required some extra patience to blend out. That said, those downsides weren’t so bad that they deterred me from using the palette. I still ended up reaching for this one several days in a row just because the tones work very well for me and the ease of use is good enough.

For this first look, I used the lightest matte on the inner corner and brow bone and blended the lighter brown matte in the crease and along the lower lashline. Then I applied the ivory shimmer all over the lid, used the deepest matte as a liner, and applied the topper to the inner lower lashline.

Here, I wanted to try using the deepest matte in a way that required blending to see how it would do and use the topper as an actual topper. Both worked out fine. The deepest matte had plenty of pigmentation, applied evenly and blended out well. I’m happy to report the topper doesn’t have a ton of fallout but it does shorten wear time and cause creasing earlier in the day.

Unlimited Mauve

The Unlimited Mauve  palette is focused on purples and is the only one that has an actual shifty shade. The topper is a duochrome that shifts between pink and orange depending on the angle of light. The toppers in the rest of the  palettes don’t appear to shift at all. The matte purples are more muted than I was expecting, looking a bit more grayish purple on the eye. The deepest matte has good color payoff but doesn’t adhere super well so I had to keep building it up during application. The shimmery purple definitely shows up well as a lavender on the lid but has a good amount of larger sparkle and fallout.

For this one, I used all three mattes on the upper lid and crease. The lightest one is used highest up, just below the brow bone. I didn’t use it as a highlight because it is a little darker than my skin tone. The lighter purple matte is used broadly in the crease and the deepest matte is used on the outer corner. I applied the lavender shimmer to the inner half of the lid and used the topper all along the lower lashline.