Face the Day with the Urban Decay Naked Flushed Cheek Palette

After wowing legions of women with its Naked eyeshadow palettes, which forced naysayers to rethink their misconceptions regarding neutral eye shadows being boring or ordinary, trendsetting makeup brand Urban Decay has ventured to do the same with cheek colors, expanding its Naked line to include a versatile palette for the complexion. The Urban Decay Naked Flushed palette ($30 atSephora.com and UrbanDecay.com) features a blush shade, silky bronzer, and shimmering highlighter in one sleek compact.

The bronzer shade within the Urban Decay Naked Flushed palette accounts for most of the real estate inside the palette. The bronzer’s micronized, jet-milled formula feels silky soft on skin, and the finish is mainly matte but with just a hint of shimmer for a radiant glow. The color, meanwhile, is a medium bronze shade reminiscent of terracotta pots. If I had one complaint, it would be that the bronzer has a bit of an orange tint which isn’t necessarily flattering on everyone. In fact, I’d contend that the bronzer is perhaps the most problematic of the three cheek colors in the palette.

The powder blush, on the other hand, is a mauve-ish medium rose hue with a  satin finish and a hint of golden shimmer. The color isn’t quite as golden and warm as NARS Orgasm, which has a seashell, coral pink tint and tons of tiny gold and rosegold micro-pearls, but it shares the universally flattering quality that has made the NARS Orgasm Blush such a cult classic (and which will likely do the same for this Urban Decay shade). The blush is richly pigmented and it feels soft, velvety, and almost moist, so that just a bit of color delivers an intense dose of color that can, at the same time, be diffused and blended for as dramatic or subtle a glow as needed.

The highlighter, meanwhile, is a pale pink champagne hue that’s saturated with light-diffusing particles that bestow a dewy finish upon the skin. The highlighter is my absolute favorite product within the palette since it gives you that “lit from within” glow we all covet.

All three cheek colors are packaged inside one single rectangular pan so that, you can sweep your makeup brush atop any one single section or swirl it from side to side to blend them all together.

Ideally, if you want to really contour your face like a pro, I’d suggest applying the bronzer below the cheekbones, at a diagonal slant, then applying the blush shade atop cheekbones, focusing the color along the apples of the cheeks. And, as a finishing touch, you’ll then want to apply the highlighter color to the tops of cheekbones to make them more pronounced.

Below, you’ll find swatches of the three shades in the Naked Flushed palette:

Below, check out a photo in which I’m wearing the products in the palette: