Last year I wrote about my love of the Spectrum palette from Urban Decay. Urban Decay palettes tend to make people tribal. There are those who purchase all of them, those who are Naked devotees , the Vice palette crew and people like me who dip in and out of the range.
Last year’s Spectrum palette was the first urban palette that I have really gone a bit doo lally for. Bright vibrant colours in shimmer and satin textures – what is not to like. It was limited edition and last year I wrote loving about it here. This year, after a raft of Urban Decay releases (some of which have put MAC to shame), another palette of my dreams has been relased. Full Spectrum. Same principle – groups of colours that can be worn together and a beautiful range of bright vibrant shades. Now that I have my hands on both, I though it would be helpful to do a bit of a compare and contract.
If you have Spectrum, do you need Full Spectrum? Where are the gaps and is it worth the money.
Packaging
I much prefer Full Spectrum to Spectrum packaging. Gone is the ‘jewellery box’ of last year, we are onto a straight palette with a big mirror. It is still a bulky palette that you wont necessary wont want to travel with but it is a thing of beauty. You also get a double ended brush. There wasn’t a brush supplied last year and whilst the quality of the brush is OK I would have been happy without it.
Shade Selection / Quality
Spectrum was shimmers and glitters, Full Spectrum has satins and mattes in the mix too. Spectrum has sets of three complementary shades within each tone . There are also no dude shades. Full Spectrum has a greater variety of shades. There were no black, grey or white tones in the palette. Full Spectrum also has a couple. Matte yellow is always a challenge – Caravela is not up to mustard. Bump, the matte white is surprisingly good but Blindsided and Hatter are both vibrant when first applied and then fade. The rest of the shadows are the Urban Decay quality that you would expect an there are some beautiful and unusual colours. There are 18 new shades and 3 from previous palettes. There are no repeats from last year to this year although there are a couple of similar shades. Spectrum has better quality shades but Full Spectrum has more variety.
Cost
Last year it was 15 shades for 35, this year it is 21 for 43. Both are great value, Full Spectrum is slightly better value, but only slightly. With both palettes you get a lot of bang for your buck.
Should you buy it.
If you are a neutrals fan – look away. If you only dip into bright colours occasionally, buy a couple of mono shades. If you are an Urban Decay devotee it is a no brainer, but if you like bright pigmented vibrant and unusual colours, walk don’t run to pick it up. If you bought last years Spectrum palette, strictly speaking you don’t need Full Spectrum, but you probably want it!
Urban Decay Full Spectrum is available from Debenhams and other authorised stockists
PR Sample