Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Surreal Light Palette

The holiday season is the perfect season for make-up, because there are many brands who release palettes and sets with a variety of their products with a great value. Hourglass, one of my favorite brands has released the Limited Edition Ambient Lighting Edit – Surreal Light Palette for the holidays, which includes never-before-released shades of powder, bronzer, blushes, and highlighter. I’m going to review this palette and show you before and after pictures in this post.

The Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Surreal Light Palette comes in a simple, champagne gold packaging that has information regarding the content. All Hourglass products that I own so far came in the same type of packaging. I love the simplicity and it already looks luxurious.

The palette has a matte marble look and is made of durable, high quality plastic. The size of the palette of similar to an A6 paper, which is fits four times in a regular A4 paper. It has some weight but still is compact and feels sturdy enough to travel.

.

The back of the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Surreal Light Palette has an schematic overview with all the shades. The front of the palette has the Hourglass logo in silver. I think this palette is the first with the marbleized look. Normally, all the compacts and palettes I own of this brand are shiny metallic with different brown/gold hues. I find it refreshing but still simple and luxurious looking. I think I even like this better than the normal packaging! This palette stays looking clean because you can’t see any fingerprints like you get on shiny surfaces.

The palette does not have a button or magnetic closure so you just push the palette open and closes by a “click”. The lid has a hinge so it stays in place on how you set it. The lid has a nice sizable mirror too.

The Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Surreal Light Palette contains a powder (left sid), two blushes (top two squares), a bronzer (left bottom square) and a highlighter (right bottom square). The powder has the biggest pan size, taking 1/3rd of the palettes space containing 4 grams of product. The other products are all in individual squares, taking 1/6th of the palette and containing 1.4 grams of product each. A fullsize Hourglass powder contains 10 grams, bronzer 11 grams, blush 4.25 grams and highlighter 4.5 grams, which means that you get a lot less product compared to the fullsize in this palette.

Here are all the swatches of the products inside the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Surreal Light Palette from left to right: Surreal Light (finishing powder), Surreal Glow (blush), Surreal Effect (blush), Surreal Bronze Light (bronzer), Surreal Strobe Light (highlighter). All the powders are extremely soft, finely milled and have great pay-off. None of them have any fallout. The only thing that I don’t like is that everything is very shimmery, which of course fits the holiday season but I personally don’t like shimmer on my face. I’m more a dewy glow type of person. Unfortunately, the shimmery finish that I’m seeing is not visible in the swatches. The finishing powder has the least amount of shimmer but it’s still too much for my taste. The highlighter has the most shimmer, even containing some bigger pieces of glittery shimmer particles.

Here’s a before/after picture using the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Surreal Light Palette. I’m only wearing foundation and concealer (and eye/lip products) in the before picture. I have used a setting powder for the concealer since the palette only contains a finishing powder. I used all the products inside the palette for this look.

I first took the Surreal Light Finishing Powder and applied all over my face. Then I applied the Surreal Bronze Light on the hollows of my cheek, top of my forehead and a tiny bit on my nose. I applied the Surreal Glow Blush just above the bronzer, and the Surreal Effect Blush on the apples of my cheeks. To finish, I applied the Surreal Strobe Light Highlighter on the tops of my cheekbones, bridge and tip of my nose and the cupids bow.

Even though the powders are all a bit too shimmery for my taste, I do love all the products in the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Surreal Light Palette. I just adore how Hourglass powder products merge with the skin, creating a beautiful and healthy looking effect. I think that the powders in the palette are most suitable for evening parties which I’ve already mentioned, is perfect for the holiday season. I personally wouldn’t wear these during summer because I would probably feel like I’m looking like a discoball in direct sunlight. There are many Hourglass powders that have different finishes and all of the ones I’ve tried are just amazing and all give a beautiful glow from within look. I’m a huge fan of this luxury brand and am happy to invest to buy their products.

The Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Surreal Light Palette is available for $80 USD (excluding shipping, taxes and customs fees. Check xe.com for the current price in Euro) at Sephora.com. It is quite expensive and is about the price of two Hourglass powder products. Imagine how much you have to spend if you would buy a fullsize for all the products in the palette. So even though the amount of product that you get is much smaller, I still think this is a great set, especially if you want to try out the different types of products from Hourglass.

Have you ever tried any Hourglass product before?