| Review | Hourglass Ambient Light Edit- Surreal Light Palette Review



Review: Hourglass Ambient Light Edit- Surreal Light Palette Review

It seems that in the past few years, since the popularity of the Ambient Light Powders, Hourglass has released some form of an Ambient Light palette. I have always been a long time fan of the Ambient Light collection because I am not a fan of traditional setting powders. These Ambient Light powders contain a soft glow and leave the skin look natural and perfected. This year, Hourglass has created a brand new Ambient Powder shade in Surreal Light, along with two new blushes, a bronzer, and highlighter infused with the Surreal Light powder.



The Hourglass Ambient Light Edit- Surreal Light Palette retails for $80.00 USD and is available at Sephora and other retailers. The palette contains all brand new shades that currently only available in this palette. I'm very sure they will release all of these products individually soon.  The palette is packaged in a beautiful matte marbled plastic case. It look very clean and luxe, clearly targeting the Instagram beauty community. The plastic casing is sturdy and snaps open and close. There is a large mirror inside making a perfect travel companion. Like I previously stated, the palette contains one powder, two blushes, one bronzer, and one highlighter. Also, a little tutorial card to let you know where to place the various products. 





The Sephora website describes this palette as: 

These never-before-released shades of pressed powder, bronzer, blushes, and highlighter are great for all skin types with everything you need to finish, brighten, contour, and highlight skin in a single compact. The travel-worthy case features the latest addition to the Ambient® Light collection—including Surreal Light—a sheer nude powder, evokes the magic hour where the sun brings the softest, most flattering glow to the complexion. Formulated with Photoluminescent Technology, the optically transparent particles flatter the look of skin by refracting favorable light. The result is skin that looks smooth, even, and enhanced—not masked. The soft-focus technology also helps to minimize the look of wrinkles and imperfections, neutralize discoloration, and emulate the appearance of younger, healthy-looking skin for a lit-from-within, holiday glow. 
This palette contains: - 0.14 oz/ 4 g in Ambient Lighting Powder in Surreal Light (sheer nude) - 0.04 oz/ 1.4 g in Ambient Lighting Bronzer in Surreal Bronze Light (neutral tan with Surreal Light) - 2 x 0.04 oz/ 1.4 g Ambient Lighting Blush in Surreal Glow (pale peony pink with Surreal Light), Surreal Effect (cool, pink rose with soft, warm peach) - 0.04 oz/ 1.4 g in Ambient Strobe Lighting Powder in Surreal Strobe Light (glimmering peach) 
"I wanted to recreate the coveted lighting of magic hour or as my family likes to call it "magic time"—the time of day where the light is warm and soft at the same time and makes everyone look so good. The soft, warm tones of Surreal Light give you that effect any time of day."—Carisa Janes, Hourglass Founder

The Surreal Light Ambient Powder is a peachy-beige powder. Created to refract light in a flattering way, this powder really does perfect the skin! I instantly noticed a blurring effect on myself and my friend. Any texture, pores, or lines are softened and the skin looks smooth. It even blurs texture from acne or acne scarring.The powder provides a lovely soft glow and sets liquid foundation beautifully. I used this on my dry skin and my friend who has oil skin, it worked well keeping our makeup on all day. My friend's skin began to get oil after six hours or so of wear. This is still pretty good for a powder that is not meant to be oil absorbing (she also had foundation primer on). This is actually my favorite product in the palette! Unfortunately, I feel this powder will only work as an all-over  face powder for fair to medium skins. For tan to deeper skin tones, it can work as a under eye brightening powder or to set the highlighted points of the face. 

The Surreal Glow Blush is a light nuetral peach shade. This shade is very light and will work best on a fair skin tone. The pigment can be built up but not very much. My skin tone is on the border of being too dark for this palette in general. This shade is a "barely-there" blush for me. 

The Surreal Effect Blush is a cool rose pink. This shade is much more universal but still may be too light for deep skin tones. Although this shade is cool toned it is still flattering on warm skin tones and provides a skin brightening flush. These blushes tend to have very soft pigment making them look really natural but they need to built up for deeper skin tones. 

The Surreal Bronze Light is a cool rosy-tan shade. This bronzer is very very light. This is probably because it is fused with the very light Surreal Light powder. This bronzer doesn't do much for me because it is so light. It can be built up, like with any of the ambient products, but even built up it is very very subtle. On a fair skin tone I can see this working much better but I still think it is too rosy to be used as a bronzer. It can be used as a blush shade and on my skin, it looks very similar to the Surreal Glow Blush. This is probably the most disappointing product in the palette. 

The Ambient Strobe Lighting Powder in Surreal Strobe is a soft golden peach shimmer. It reminds me of Becca Champange Pop's very distant relative. This highlighter is soft with fine golden shimmer. This shade is very universally flattering but I don't find it to be anything special. 




Overall, this palette is a bit of a disappointment. The shades in this palette really only work for someone with fair skin, as you get darker in the spectrum it becomes less usable. I can't recommend this palette because of the high price and the shades are so limited. If you have fair skin this palette would be very beautiful on you. It shows up on a medium skin tone but not well and not without some work. The problem with these "all-inclusive" palettes is that they will never work for everyone. This Surreal Light collection just happens to lean towards the lighter side and therefore only flatters fairer skin tones. However, I do LOVE the Surreal Light Powder and highly recommend getting it, when it comes out individually.With so many pretty face palettes being released this year, you can easily pass on this one if you aren't a fair skinned beauty. 

Let me know your thoughts on this face palette? Do you have one you like better? Leave a comment below!


1 comment:

  1. The swatches look beautiful on you, but I can see how this would be more geared toward someone with lighter skin. I'll be passing though to save money for all of the other amazing releases coming out!

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