Archived Post
Rant & Rave: Cream Bronzer
This Week’s Topic: CREAM BRONZERS!
Your Mission: Tell us what you love, hate, or are otherwise indifferent to about cream bronzers. Are they easier to use? Harder?
Explore Temptalia
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:
Compare Any Two
Curious how two shades compare to each other? Type in the shades below to get instant side-by-side swatches!
40 Comments
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!
Comments on this post are closed.
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 like the finish of cream bronzers, and I like that they tend to last a while longer than powders, but I have a hard time applying them! I usually end up with an unblended look in some areas…
Chanel bronze universal
Love em! I like to use a white goat hair brush I.e. mac 168 is perfect. It is dense and evenly distributed at a slight angle. I then buff on the product in my natural contours or to warm up around my face. My favorite cream bronzer? A darker liquid or cream foundation will do just fine! 😀
you are awesome, I love that being creative, work with what you have
Does it stain the brush?
Yes it does until you wash it. I wash mine with Clinique cream cleanser it tends to breakdown the color better then anything I have ever used! And leaves it nice and fluffy when it dries 🙂
♥♥♥♥Chanel Bronze Universal♥♥♥♥
Yep!!! Love it 🙂
pure love!!
I LOVE cream bronzers more than powders. Powders can almost look too sculpted and too contoured. However, with cream, it blends easily into the skin and looks really radiant and glowy. Perfect with a cream highlighter as well.
My favorite combination for healthy glowy looking skin is:
Bronzer: Solelil Tan De Chanel/Bronze Universel
Highligher: MAC Cream Colour Base in Hush
Chanel’s Bronze Universel is a lovely product, but it’s also challenging. I haven’t found the best way to use it, so I have consistently chosen my powder bronzers over it. The color seems to lean slightly orange, and I want to find the ideal way of blending it softly and evenly. Maybe my fingertips instead of a brush? Hmmm.
I love the MAC Skinsheen Bronzerstick in Tantint
The only cream bronzer I have is the one I got from MAC’s To the Beach collection and I really like it. It’s very creamy and easy to blend. I think the only downside of a cream bronzer would be that it dries out too quickly or isn’t very creamy to begin with. That would make it very hard to work with, but I haven’t experienced that with mine.
Make sure to moisturize, also add a tiny drop of moisturizer to the stick bronzer to sofent it up and then buff it on! 🙂
Yesterday, I purchased Surf, Baby! Skinsheen Bronzer Stick in Billionaire Bronze to use for contouring. I loved it when the lady put it on in the store, but today when I tried to duplicate it, not so good
I love the new bronzer sticks from MAC. They are so easy to blend. I’ve been using Billionaire Bronze to contour faithfully since I got it. It give me the perfect sun-kissed glow. I wont be using a powder bronzer any time soon.
I love NARS the multiple in South Beach. It gives me a healthy bronzed look in seconds
Question for everyone who loves chanel bronze universal:
Do you think it would show up on a medium dark(say around nc40) skin tone?
I’m NC37-NC40 so I’m already bronzed! and what I love about Chanel Bronze Universel is that it gives to your skin a beautiful subtle caramel glow, and yes if you want to you can layer it for a little more coverage. I think is just the right amount of color. If you are not sure you can always go to Chanel and test it directly on your skin 😀
No I was hoping to use this as a contour color. Do you think it would be dark enough for that? Unfortunately, I live in the 3rd world. We have no decent makeup counters here. I’ll have to order online, which is why I am asking.
I do like the cream bronzers for the blendability and ease of wear. I’m currently using Nars Laguna illuminator and it just blends right in after makeup/moisturizer. And I find it’s still there at the end of the day. Doesn’t fall off and it’s just imparts a different kind of glow.
Love the finish and some of them last better in warm weather. Really useful if you’re using cream blushes or highlighters.
I wouldn’t recommend them for beginners though. Most of them take some skill and good tools and it can be hard to fix a mistake.
I’d love to find a cream colour I could use as a could use as a contour because I think that would work really well.
I love cream bronzers!! Right now I use mac’s cream stick bronzed in tan tint and also using maybelline’s dream smooth mousse in honey beige. Just ordered chanel’s bronze universal/soleil de tan.
Last summer I really loved MAC to the beach cream bronzer in beach bronze but decided it was to shimmery. Now I am loving Chanel bronze universal.
I’ve never tried cream bronzer. Question do they show up stronger or subtler than powder? I am very fair and find powder harsh looking so I would want something less noticable not more.
It’s all in the application 🙂
I’m pretty fair skinned as well (NW15) and find that mst pre-made bronzers are simply too dark/too orange to give me a natural look. I use a matte foundation (Clinique’s Acne Solutions is wonderful, and in my opinion a dupe for MUFE’s matte velvet + foundation) 2-3 shades darker than my normal skin tone to contour. This way it blends easily with my normal foundation (of the same brand) and looks like natural shading. There’s nothing worse than a bronzer that’s too dark/orange/shimmery streaked across your jawline!
I have Chanel Bronze Universal and Bobbi Brown Matte bronzer and I find myself reaching for the BB much more often. It’s easier to blend and I like the matte finish.
I love Chanel Bronze Universel. Indeed, is a little challenging if you are not used to cream bronzers, but you’ll get use to the consistency and will totally fall in love with the delightful fragrance, the great packaging, the amazing staying power and the warm beautiful glow that your skin will get. I would bathe in this baby if I could 😀
CHRISTINE — ill you be doing a review/swatching and/or tutorial on Chanel Bronze Universal?
I don’t have it, sorry!
I finally broke down and bought the bronze universal. I tap my elf powder brush into it, I don’t swirl it around. I’m NC20 and don’t want to over do it . It is soooo nice, natural looking, glowy. I’ve tried alot of bronzers and this one is IT. Love.
I think that cream bronzers give a more natural look/finsih. They melt into your skin whereas powders just sit on top, esp if you have dry skin on your cheeks like me. What’s your favorite cream bronzer Christine?
I have had MAC To the beach bronzer and Chanel’s universal bronzer. I thought there oke. Now I use Too Faced Aqua Bunny and girls, i’m in love with this one! It’s like i’ve been sitting in the sun for a few hours. Gives me that really nice sunkisses look. I didn’t achive this look with the other bronzers I mentioned.
I Have 2 from the Mac to beach collection there great in pigmentation but there so shimmery like I can’t contour with em because that defeats the purpose of it looking natural.there a great product but I think i need find how to work with it in more ways
I use a MAC concealer 2 or 3 shades darker than my skin tone, I put some dots on the areas i want to cover and I bled them whith any brush that is dense. You must work it better than the powder ones but I think the results are more natural and of course it lasts much longer.
Love the Chanel–Whatever it is called these days–SOLEIL TAN DE CHANEL. I can never remember that.
The Chanel Soleil de Chanel has been discontinued! I love this, any reccomendations for something similar? I will try the Bobbi Brown matte bronzer
I just watched a makeup tutorial that raved about the Chanel Bronze universal – low and behold, it’s been discontinued since the publishing of that video lol.
I’ve been looking up other bronzers that will go on similarly and it seems like the concenses is Maybelline’s dream smooth matte mousse in honey beige (I think someone mentioned it above) or in Toffee. Both colors are very close to Chanel’s and not as orange-y (as many ladies tend to find it – thou looks like only one of you mentioned that on this thread..)
Hope that helps! BTW the toffee color is avalible but sometimes is hard to find at the drugstore! Good luck!
I use Too Faced Aqua Bunny creme to powder bronzer it is AMAZING. $29 at Sephora. I have pretty sensitive skin and it is really light (hence the turning to powder feature)…and bonus it smells delicious. It says “Pina Colada” scent, which is right on and its just a hint of fragrance which is perfect. Drawback is as far as I know it only comes in 1 shade. But I use it all year round and my pigment varies pretty significantly – it blends into the skin really well and also works well with concealor, blush and other powders.