What brand does eyeshadow palettes best?
Natasha Denona seems to get it right most of the time with finishes and quality.
— Christine
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!
25 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 agree, Natasha Denona.
Once upon a time, I’d have said Urban Decay but these days, everything’s up for grabs. I’ve had great and not so great palettes from Natasha Denona and Pat McGrath as well as just about every other Sephora/Department Store brand. I do have a soft spot for Dior and Chanel quads/5 pans but I’ve got so many that I really need to stop buying them.
For me its been Blend Bunny and Glamlite. I know some say Glamlite is inconsistant but I don’t know, I must be getting extremely lucky because I have no duds from them. Just received two palettes from Cosmic Brushes, these are also looking promising!
I have the Serenity and Muse palettes. They are AMAZING and superior to Glamlite IMO.
Definitely Natasha Denona and Pat McGrath for high end, also, the previous just dc’d Dior quints and my one ‘n only Chanel Quad in Empriente du Desert.
Menagerie Cosmetics (if you really love high quality purples, then you need Flight Club!), Fantasy Cosmetica and Nomad make for some wonderful quality less expensive, but not DS level inexpensive, high quality palettes with unique, interesting color stories.
And for the ones I purchased before discovering the owner’s questionable behavior, I do still love my ABH palettes. Especially: Modern Renaissance, Jackie Aina and Rose Metals.
Any time someone mentions Chanel’s E du D quad, my heart skips a beat. I wish they would bring that beauty back and make it permanent!
Which 5 pans did Dior discontinue? I got two really excellent ones from a release a few years ago – Jungle and New Look. I sure hope those two are still around because they are so good and so wearable and elegant without being stodgy.
I wish Chanel would, too, Mariella!
As for Dior, they went and reformulated almost their entire line to be a non-talc, “clean beauty” company, and the quints and all the Backstage line seem to have suffered as a direct result. Also, some of the quints were totally dc’d, others still exist, but have quality issues. There are some new color/shade configurations, as well.
Honestly, talk about business suicide – in this quest for “clean”, so many companies are losing loyal customers because the quality is just no longer there.
ND is ok, I’m not always crazy about everything, but for me Viseart always gets it right. Best formula on the market.
1) Viseart 2) Natasha Denona
Pat McGraft and Natasha Denona get it right imo about 90% of the time. I love Unearthly and Adept cosmetics eye shadows Indie wise.
Agree with Natasha Denona, Pat McGrath, & Viseart. I also think Oden’s Eye & Give Me Glow have unique and interesting color stories.
At the moment a lot of brands are having quality issues or just not putting out anything different from the pink hued colour range, lots and lots of matte shade – all of which fails to interest me.
On balance I would say ND as well as PMG.
The really last set of palettes that were outstanding was actually yours Christine – the SG x Temptalia set.
You are so right about quality issues and colour offerings that aren’t red, orange, pink…. but the biggest thorn in most of our sides, I think, is the “iffy” quality from formerly wonderful brands.
Like most of you here, I own lots of shadow palettes from plenty of brands. The ones I come back to most are hands down Natasha Denona. In second is Pat McGrath.
Natasha Denona, Sydney Grace, Pat McGrath, Kaleidos, Viseart, Nomad
Sydney Grace! We are all still waiting on your review if they’re new Blessed palette…hopefully before their sale in a few days.
I find myself constantly returning to PML and ND (which will be harder now that Sephora Canada no longer carries ND).
PML and ND are no longer available in store in France’s Sephora.
On the higher end, I like Natasha Denona too, except her colors are never the same in the palette on my eyes (they are darker), so I know that going in. Pat McGrath does too, color schemes and quality (even if the Rose theme needs to end in my opinion). However, since I can’t afford either at the moment (and truth be told, don’t need anymore palettes), here are a few that I’d recommend that cost less. Glamlite does fun palettes, nice color schemes and they work. And ones that do palettes well (not best), but that I usually can trust (after reading about the formula) are Revolution London Beauty and Huda (thought the latter one is more expensive).
Sydney grace for me ! I love the tiny marvels palette.
I agree, SG makes great eyeshadow palettes and their color stories are way better made and thought out then Natasha Denona’s or Pat’s.
Does, that makes this question hard. I’ve not bought any new palettes for some time, the last was Ninetease from Vieve, I like it a lot.
I also like my little Victoria Beckham quad, Tuxedo.
As I only have one from each of the two mentioned I can’t really say that they do palettes best.
I have some old MAC palettes that I like and keep going back to and then there’s Viseart Neutral Mattes, my most used palette of all.
I guess I would have to say Sydney Grace, my three Temptalia palettes are so good!
I can’t help it!! I adore my Sydney Grace shadows. I did a beautiful bronzy with some smoke look today using On The Horizon. So so gorgeous! I have about 350 SG shadows (palettes included) and have so much fun creating looks. I just have no interest in other palettes anymore. I don’t ever use the others. Oops! Tee!
I agree with that Natasha Denona makes great eyeshadow palettes quality wise but her color stories is where she does not shine. Theyre very repetative, many similar shades, many warm shades, theyre just not well rounded and thought out color stories which could have all been much better.