Review: Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. I actually own it. Urban Decay Naked 3 palette, you are mine!

Look at that beautiful palette! Even from the outside, this is beautiful. The metallic rose gold case is a lot more practical than the (admittedly pretty) velvet packaging of the original Naked palette, and I love that it has that interesting texture. It kind of makes me think of rumpled sheets, but in a decadent way. Like sleeping til noon in satin sheets kind of decadent. Yeah, okay, I kind of fancy this palette.

Open it up, and it gets even more beautiful. There’s a really well-sized mirror inside the lid – seriously, you could actually do your whole face in it, unlike a lot of palette mirrors. You also get a double-ended brush, with one thin end and one fatter end – perfect for sweeps of colour or detail. I know from my other Urban Decay brush that their eyeshadow brushes are actually really good quality, and I have to say, I like the rose gold barrel. Very sleek looking.

Finally, we can actually look at the colours! All twelve of these colours are brand-new, and as far as I know, exclusive to this set. There’s the typical Naked spectrum from highlight-light to corner-colour-dark, but this range is much more pink-toned. As usual, there are a few mattes, but it’s mostly shimmers, which Urban Decay have mastered completely. Of course, all these shadows are buttery soft, go on like a dream, and last pretty well (I have normal to oily eyelids) with and without primer.

From left to right:

• Strange – a matte white-beige.
• Dust – sparkly pale pink shimmer.
• Burnout – very slightly shimmery dusty rose.
• Limit – matte dusty rose.
• Buzz – very shimmery rosy pink.
• Trick – sparkly copper.

My favourites of this six are Buzz and Trick, because I feel like they have the most pizazz of all the shades. Strange is an excellent highlight. I’m not too thrilled with Limit, because I’m concerned that matte pinks might look a little bit bruisy, but I need to experiment with it – it might make a good base colour.

The darker side:

• Nooner – darker matte rose.
• Liar – shimmery brownish-pink.
• Factory – shimmery pinkish-brown.
• Mugshot –  shimmery mushroom brown.
• Darkside – slightly shimmery dark brown.
• Blackheart – reddish-black with raspberry coloured sparkle.

My favourite of this six is hands-down Blackheart – I’ve never seen a shadow like this before! It has real depth, and the glitter really makes it look more beautiful than your standard dark shade, without it actually being ‘glittery’. Nooner is like a darker version of Limit, and I have the same qualms about it, but who knows, maybe I can make mattes work. These six shadows are a little less pink, and I think will act really nicely as foils for the pinker colours to stop a look from being too Barbie Girl…

A full range of swatches, in the same order as the palette. The top row is on bare skin, the bottom row is over Urban Decay’s Primer Potion, which is a great eyeshadow primer. It was actually quite difficult to get the primer swatches off, that’s how good it is!

Close up swatches of the first six… Just a quick note – none of the shimmers seem to have that crazy fall out that Urban Decay often has with its glitterier shades, which is good. Perhaps they’ve worked out the formula! The mattes don’t have the best pay off, but I think that’s just because of the quick swatch swipes. They should be buildable.

And close ups of the second six. Again, the matte payoff is slightly worse than the glitters, but you can see that all of these are quite blendable and are perfect everyday shades.

And some messy, messy swatches of my favourite shades from the palette – on top, there’s Trick, which blends out to a very wearable copper, and then on the bottom, there’s Blackheart. Applied neat on the left, and blended out to show how subtle the sparkle is on the right. It looks like burning coal – black with a fiery heart.

So. Prettiest palette ever? I’m looking forward to coming up with some great looks and trying to incorporate this wealth of rose gold into my routine – keep your eyes peeled!