Maybelline Blushed Nudes Palette Review

I’m so thrilled that the drugstore brands are coming out with big eyeshadow palettes like the kind you get from high-end makeup brands but at a fraction of the cost! This review is on the Maybelline Blushed Nudes Palette*. With it’s 12 blushing rosy shades, it seems to be competing directly with the Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette that retails for $53 but it costs only $9.99!

There are 2 palettes in the series from Maybelline, The Blushed Nudes and The Nudes. Both have 12 pans of color with a mix of matte and shimmer tones. I picked The Blushed Nudes because it seemed to offer more variety with the assortment of cool greys, taupes, and dusty pinks. There are even a few warmer coppery shades thrown in. The Nudes is all warm brown and golden tones.

The down-side to this palette on first glance is that there’s only one matte shade and the rest are varying degrees of satin, shimmer, and full-on glitter. For mature women, that means that some of the pans in the palette are just not usable at all.

On the back of the palette Maybelline shows that the shades are grouped into quads, trios, and duos so those not sure about color selection have a fool-proof guide for which shades go together.

There’s a nice variety of very wearable tones here from soft pinks and taupes to coppers and greys to rich plums so it seems like it would offer many different looks and be fairly versatile. I did the swatches by the quads:

1st Quad from the 4 pans on the left side of the palette

2nd Quad from the 4 pans in the center of the palette

3rd Quad from the 4 pans on the right side of the palette

The color payout seems to be best in the metallic shades. The lighter shades just aren’t pigmented enough and are pretty disappointing. There’s a ton of fall-out from the glitter in each color, with a little fall-out from the actual pigment, so using an eyeshadow guard, or putting concealer on after is necessary. The shadows are a pretty crumbly texture overall with one or two that are creamier like the matte taupe and the pale shimmery pink.

It’s very hard to get much color on the eyelids. It took 5 passes with the silvery grey shade to get any color at all and then it largely blended away. You’d never guess the amount of work and time it took to achieve the look below (Click here to see the tutorial for this look):

Based on my first few uses, I found the quality of the eyeshadows to be disappointing. That said, those who want a very subtle look might be happy with the palette. The finished look was really pretty and with a primer (Tarte 360 Creaseless Smoothing Primer*) it lasted all day!

I guess for under $10, it’s not a bad palette, but, the colors could be much more pigmented and easier to blend with less fallout, but the palette does offer a good range of shades to achieve a variety of looks.

Shopping Links:

Maybelline Blushed Nudes Palette*

*All products featured in this article were purchased by me. There are no up-front paid product placements in this post. There may be one or more affiliate links marked with an *. This means that if you use the link and purchase a product I receive a small commission on the sale. It does not cost you anything extra, and you are free to purchase products where you wish and use the links or not as you choose. But if you do choose to use my links, thank you!