I’ve been raving on about this Becca Ombre Nudes palette for a while now and so – at the risk of over-Becca-ing you this week (see lipstick post here) – I wanted to just do a quick run-down on why I like it so much and why I think it’s a good buy.

There are plenty of matte neutral-toned eye palettes out there at varying price-points and widely differing quality levels, but the Ombre Nudes shadows are densely pigmented and easy to blend – two characteristics that don’t always play nicely together. Quite often, with heavy pigment, I’ll try and add a tiny bit of smokey-dark brown and all of a sudden there will be this immovable blotch on my eyelid that almost needs an electric floor-polisher to buff it out. Not so with the Becca palette – yes the darker shades need a light touch, but the pay-off is worth it and it’s easy enough to handle if you’ve a clean, sturdy eye blending brush at the ready.

I suppose that much of my love for the Ombre Nudes palette is down to the fact that the shades work so well for me – all but the very lightest (which barely shows up on my skintone) can be combined to create quick but sophisticated eye looks. Because all of the shades are matte, the “looks” are never OTT – we’re talking the most subtle of contours, the daintiest of cat eyes, the faintest hint of a sultry smoke. I mean of course you can build it up and wheel out something much more dramatic, but the beauty of the matte shadow is that you can make it look like actual shadow.

The coolish tones help with the sculpting, contouring effect too – there’s just a touch of grey to them that makes the shades look believable when you apply to the crease or blend out around the lash-line.

My favourite way to use the palette is to cover the entire lid with the second lightest shade and then use a combination of the next two darkest to create shadow at the crease and outer corners of the eyes, pulling the darker colour out in a sort of triangle towards the end of my eyebrow. The result is usually something like this:

It’s simple but effective and if I want to ramp things up a bit then I use the very darkest shade in the palette as a sort of smokey, smudgy top-coat over a brown, soft liner. The photo below was taken weeks ago but it gives you an idea of how the matte shades also work to create a more dramatic look:

It really is an incredibly versatile palette and conveniently non-bulky – there’s just what you need and no more, no less. Although it has to be said that the Ombres Nudes palette is quite the multi-tasker if you need it to be; the middle three shadows can be used as an emergency brow-filler and the very darkest shadow can be used wet as a vibrant, long-lasting liner. The coolish neutrals work well on eyebrows, where warmer beiges and browns would look wrong, and the deepest shade used wet creates a dark line that’s less harsh than using jet black.

See the Ombre Nudes palette in action here

You can find the Becca Ombre Nudes palette at Space NK here* – it’s £30. Note that if your skin tone is darker than mine, you will find the very lightest shade in the palette to be almost completely redundant (you could use it as a sort of highlighter but I always think it looks a bit ashy when it’s a matte shadow) and the second-lightest may well be slightly too pale. There’s an absolutely brilliant palette from Morphe that has a huge selection of matte neutrals – £19 here*.

Buy the Becca Ombre Nudes palette here*