How do you organize your makeup palettes? Share!
I have a couple of palettes that tend to be go-tos for traveling, which I keep in a drawer with my basics and core products, and the rest I keep in larger pull-out drawers. I have one drawer just for Urban Decay palettes, and then one drawer for most other brands!
Do you have a question idea? Submit yours here.
We're here to help you make better beauty purchases that you'll enjoy and love! We recommend signing up to take advantage of personalized features like tracking products you own, viewing dupes that you already have, and more!
Here are some useful resources for you:
Curious how two shades compare to each other? Type in the shades below to get instant side-by-side swatches!
Comments that do not adhere to our comment policy may be removed. Discussion and debate are highly encouraged but we expect community members to participate respectfully. Please keep discussion on-topic, and if you have general feedback, a product review request, an off-topic question, or need technical support, please contact us!
Please help us streamline the comments' section and be more efficient: double-check the post above for more basic information like pricing, availability, and so on to make sure your question wasn't answered already. Comments alerting us to typos or small errors in the post are appreciated (!) but will typically be removed after errors are fixed (unless a response is needed).
We appreciate enthusiasm for new releases but ask readers to please hold questions regarding if/when a review will be posted as we can't commit to or guarantee product reviews. We don't want to set expectations and then disappoint readers as even products that are swatched don't always end up being reviewed due to time constraints and changes in priorities! Thank you for understanding!
We try to approve comments within 24 hours (and reply to them within 72 hours) but can sometimes get behind and appreciate your patience! 🙂 If you have general feedback, product review requests, off-topic questions, or need technical support, please contact us directly. Thank you for your patience!
I have a drawer that contains the majority of my makeup.
For small eye palettes, I have them in a drawer, sorted by color . For larger eye palettes that are multiple colors, I store them on the side, in a plastic letter sorter on my vanity, so I can easily grab them.
I have an acrylic setup which holds most of it like the Urban Decay Naked and Bobbi Brown palette. The smaller ones I keep in a box (usually all eyeshadows) so I can use it more frequently!
Once again,mine are piled into drawers of my Ikea alex..not neat or helpful when looking for one. In my quest for organizing ideas,I came across one where the palettes that fit were stood on the spine…not sure that is the correct word. Anyway,standing up,not lying. I think it looked nice and probably makes it easier to find what you need. But,do you think that would damage the contents? Maybe loosening them?
Id love to see photos of your makeup stash Christine. You must have a room..or three,lol
Your “core collection ” at the ready is a good idea…:)
I’ve shown mine here! 🙂 http://www.temptalia.com/category/features/makeup-collection
Thank you! I,of course, have nowhere near your collection. But, I will be checking out your ideas others too. I don’t want to spend a lot of $ on stuff. I have a nice desk and the 9 drawer alex. I am considering getting another 9 drawer asap. But ,other than that, i am trying to do low-cost organizing..Thanks again!
It’s a huge matter of doing it for me. I moved this past August and things kinda got just put where they generally go, My closet id awful! lol
I like the Alex 9-drawers in general, but they were too $$$ for how many I would need without enough of the taller drawers per unit, so I ended up going with custom Bestas. Mine weren’t cheap, since I got ALL drawers and did high gloss (if you did a combination of shelves/drawers, it would be less, or a smaller unit), but they’re gorgeous and I was looking for a final solution (one that I loved and wouldn’t keep wanting to replace with something nicer).
That’s a good idea! My collection ,of course,is not as large as yours. So,I may not need all that.But ,as you said ,a permanent solution is always better.
most i keep in The Container Store’s Luxe Arcylic Modular Wide Medium Draw but i always keep a few out stacked upright in wide slots of my Large Arcylic Makeup Organizer or some sort of desktop/mail sorter
I have a large drawer just for Urban Decay palettes…I have 30+ UD palettes! I have another drawer that I keep Sugarpill, Sleek, MAC, and Lorac in.
Where is the Mac products store? I would think that is the most products you own.
Same as the rest – just in my drawer units!
I have a stack. The biggest is at the bottom, the smallest at the top! (Spoiler alert: I don’t have very many palettes). The Naked 2 one always sits out to the side though, as that’s probably my most-used/most-travelled-with, and it’s a pain in the @$$ shape to stack.
Mine are stood up, like books, on a shelf so I can easily see them all at a glance, and I can slide one out and back in without having to move the others out of the way.
I have some in a drawer, others on display on a shelf like books, and some are in an desk mail organizers. I like to move them around so that I remind myself to use them.
I put put them all in a box and puzzle and stack until they fit, lol 🙂
I use a mail organizer that hangs on the wall!
They’re all in a drawer of an IKEA malm chest! Not organized by brand or anything, just by size but I could probably spend some time organizing better 🙂
I depotted almost all my palettes into one big z palette a while back. So now I have a z palette, sugarpill burning hearts, and a.tarteholiday palette I just stack on top of my wide drawers.
All my large palettes like my UD Naked 2, Vice 2 & 3, Lorac Pro & Unzipped are in a drawer in my bathroom vanity. MAC quads are mainly all in a box underneath that drawer. All my Nyx palettes are in a drawer in my bedroom, along with a lot of Wet n Wild palettes. NOT the best organization system by far!
All my MAC palettetes are stacked in two acrylic DVD-racks, one for blush and one for eyeshdow. My other large palettes share a deep drawer in my Ikea Alex. Smaller ones (like Chanel quads) are stored in Linus Drawer Organizers from The Container Store.
I keep all my Z palettes, Inglot palettes and random large palettes in a larger drawer of my Alex from ikea, spine up or stacked. My smaller palettes and large pigments jars in another one of the small drawers.
I don’t have many large palettes anymore. Other than my two Edwrad Bess palettes which I take when I travel, I don’t like to purchase mixed product palettes nor do I purchase cheek palettes or lip palettes. Most of my eyeshadows are standard sized quads and quints. I store them in clear acrylic containers on their side, by brand, and in alphabetical order. It makes it very easy to locate the one I want, remove it without disturbing the others, and then return it to its place.
No. I don’t have enough palettes to count! I have one real one and the rest are like quads or quints.
I did a little makeup organizing this weekend and my palettes fit in one drawer. I’m trying my best to keep it that way (lol). I organize them by size.
I have a roll-top desk instead of a vanity. I keep smaller palettes separated by brand in the divided cubbies. Palettes too large for that are stacked in desk drawer. Really small palettes, like 3-5 pans are depotted into Zpalettes (kept in a their own drawer) or stacked in a top, shallow drawer.
I love this idea! Did you modify the desk at all to make it more beauty-friendly?
No, although I am going to repaint it and change the hardware.
I did put some acrylic and wire organizers on it to accommodate makeup and tools, but I have not at this point modified the desk structure. I love the cubbies, though. I may end up putting some dividers in the drawers. My hubby got a 3D printer for Christimas, and might have him custom-make me some so things don’t slide around as much.
I stack them on two shelves that are in this little room adjacent to my bathroom. I’m always really careful when removing them since they’re not all the same size!
Is it weird that I depot everything into Z Palettes? I don’t keep anything in their original palettes.
Not weird at all, I depot everything I can as well. Some big palettes are really cumbersome. I have the UD book of shadows volume IV and it’s a pain in the neck. At my other house I have a room of my own with a huge desk where I can depot stuff. But for the past year I’ve been living in an apartment with little space to do such things. So I have that, the Vice palette, and this year and lasts Ulta exclusive tarte holiday boxes. They have sat pretty much completely unused because I haven’t depotted them. And I’m not going to try and open all of them to use a single shade from each in the morning. If they were depotted I could condense both UD palettes in one palette, though the tarte ones might have to be in separate ones. Even still, I could have the entire kit in one handheld palette instead of some monster box. Depotting doesn’t just save space it can make your mornings easier and if you travel a lot there’s no other way to be able to take all of your favorites and not get a hernia!
Nope, I depot, too–I condensed ten UD palettes into three z palettes. It was time-consuming to depot and there were some casualties (thank goodness for rubbing alcohol!), but totally worth it now, especially since it let me put the colors I frequently use together (from different palettes) next to each other. So convenient!
I depot almost everything. I keep palettes that I like the packaging on. Otherwise, in Zpalettes it goes.
I have an acrylic organizer on top of my vanity that holds my favorite palettes as well as the products that I reach for on a daily basis such as foundation, primer, mascara, bronzer, etc.
At the moment, they’re all stacked in one of organizer drawers. Eventually I want to organize them by size and color to make things a little easier
I keep most of mine in my professional kit, but all the others go into a clear stackable drawer organizer. I used to use a desending desktop mail letter organizer as well. Then I got too many palettes 😉
I keep my palettes stacked standing on my vanity. They are held in place by cool bookends.
Generally I keep all of similar colours together – the greens, the blue and multi-colour (like my Vice 2) in separate large makeup containers. My everyday bag contains my brushes, mascaras, eye brow pencils and my most used palettes: Film Noir (EL), Naked 1 and Snow Shadow by Shiseido. I have a separate lipstick bag too.
I don’t purchase palettes – I buys ones of what I like : )
I’ve found that depotting everything I can helps a lot. Simply because a Tarte palette is going to be a different size from an Urban Decay one, or a Too Faced one. Then there’s the issue of tiny palettes, the Too Faced one in a iPhone case that came out last year springs to mind, as do a lot of those gift with purchases you get at department stores. Trying to stack those is impossible and some are just big space wasters. I have two types of universal palettes, Uni palettes and ones I’ve made myself from cheap eBay palettes. I just dressed them up, magnetized them, and they’re really big so they hold a lot. But they’re super slim too, so I can stack three of them in the same space it takes to store a single Urban Decay palette.
I store the makeup inside them one of three ways. If it was from a big kit (like Too Faced’s Sweet Indulgence palette) I’ll put the whole thing in the same palette. Otherwise I sort by brand, or “complete looks” so it’s easy to grab what I need and just go. I store the palettes themselves differently. In HI I have a really big letter and mail sorter I bought from Costco. The drawers which hold letter size paper hold two of the big palettes each and I can stack I think three high on each tier, so six total per shelf. Then the top is smaller and holds my uni palettes perfectly and they’re where I store my pre selected looks so I can just grab one and go, and I know all the colors will work. Here in WA I don’t have that kind of space. So I have an acrylic organizer I found at Home Goods that is in the cabinet under my sink. One side is big sections that hold 8 uni palettes, the others have slots for little things like lip gloss, pencils, etc. In my closet I have storage baskets so I have my big palettes just stacked in there. I don’t use them much because accessing them is more difficult. After the move next month I plan to go back to the system I use in Hawaii. It works better than anything else I’ve ever tried.
We plan on moving in May, so I will hopefully get my makeup room then. Right now, I have a large caboodle train case that has my primers, foundations, concealers, powders, some blush, highlighters, two Naked Flushed palettes, both Naked Basics, Naked 2, Naked 3, and a few lip things, eyebrow stuff, and a few eye shadows and liners. Those are my most used things. I have two large baskets with lip stuff and an Ulta hair caddy. I have a big plastic container with eyeliners, mascaras, blushes, palettes,etc in there. I don’t have stuff in drawers, because I don’t do my makeup in the bathroom. I have always done in it the living room or bedroom.
Big, fav palettes like Borghese Eclissare Shadow and Light and UD are “libraried” on vanity…actually use glasses filled with pencils (one glass just for eye and one for lip) as the “bookends”. Smaller palettes, Lorac, Borghese 5 Shades of Torrid, Sultry, Marc Jacobs, Bobbi in small baskets on shelves next to sink.
I recently got an acrylic napkin organizer from simply organized that has a swivel base 🙂 it has a taller section in the middle for my taller and bigger palettes, and two shorter sections on either side that I put my small palettes or quads in. I love that it turns and I just put my go to palettes in it 🙂 love it!
Great idea!
I depot almost all of my powder products into z palettes. It took forever, but my stack of palettes used to be a couple of feet wide (stacked side by side, like books) and now I have them all in a few slim z palettes on my bureau. Urban Decay’s packaging can look really cool, but gosh darn if it isn’t bulky! Plus, this way I can rearrange colors from different palettes into complete looks. Much easier than trying to look through all my old palettes for a complimentary color!
I did leave a couple of favorite palettes intact (Laura Mercier, mostly) because they weigh less than an extra-large z palette and travel better. They’re in a drawer somewhere (I think).
I keep my palettes in the bottom two drawers of my Ikea Helmer but since I collect palettes eventually I’ll have to use the entire cabinet.
I have a custom set of drawers as makeup organizer . the mid-sized ones are used to store makeup one for lippie, one for blushes and brushes, one for nail paints and the larger one at the bottom for taller bottles of hair care and skincare stuff! 🙂
I keep my go-to’s in my vainty and my others stacked on my makeup storage.
I put most of them in an upright envelope holder, unless they’re in a book shape (in that case I just display it upright). Tiny ones go in a drawer unit, and my most used just stay out stacked (Naked 2, Naked 3, Too Faced Chocolate Bar, Inglot palette).
In order to consolidate, save space, and have easy access to my entire collection, I de-potted all of my palettes into empty XL MUFE magnetic palettes. I love them!