Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders: My Thoughts on Diffused & Luminous Light

The Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders ($45 for 0.35 oz) were undoubtedly one of the biggest make-up releases of 2013, and it seemed everyone was lemming, buying and loving at least one. I had been very much skeptical in the beginning (baked highlighters? what's so special about that?) but after reading so many reviews, I decided to jump on the bandwagon as well - pretty late at that, as the Ambient Lighting Blushes are just being released this month. But, are these Hourglass powders actually worth the hype?

I've snagged two shades: Diffused Light (left) and Luminous Light (right), and they're very different both color and texture-wise. Diffused is 'a soft, warm, pale yellow that reduces redness, eliminates shine, and gives skin clarity' while Luminous is 'a champagne pearl that creates a soft, incandescent candlelit glow—day or night'. 

As you can see, Diffused has a very smooth, uniform appearance in the pan with no veining and hardly any microshimmer particles visible. I've picked this one up to use as my setting/finishing powder - I definitely need something to counteract the redness in my cool-toned skin, and this satin, fine powder seems to create a blurring veil on the skin, diminishing some of the texture - lines, pores, scars, you name it. In terms of color-correcting and smoothing effect, I'm very happy with it, although I can't say that it has the best oil control: it tones down the shine from a freshly applied foundation and seems to prolong the matte/satin finish for a couple more hours, but it's not going to do well if you're very oily or looking for a blotting powder. The finish on the skin is a dimensional, skin-like satin, no cakiness in sight.

Luminous Light looks more like your typical baked powder - you can see the darker veins in the pan, as well as fine pearl/shimmer. I've heard it being touted as the most universal Ambient Lighting powder, as the shade is more skin-tone like for most folks, and many use it both as a finishing powder and highlighter. In the heavy arm swatches below, you can see that Luminous is actually darker than my skintone, but more importantly, it's definitely more on the shimmery side and thus tends to slightly accentuate skin texture. On my porous self, I can only use it as a highlighter, and sparingly at that. While the darker shade still works on my pale skin when used lightly, the amount of shimmer doesn't perfect my skin's textural flaws. Mind you, compared to a standard highlighter, Luminous Light is more refined and subtle, so I can see how some use it all over, especially if they favor a glowy skin finish.

In the swatches, you can clearly see the textural difference between Diffused (left) and Luminous (right). For a closer look at Luminous used as a cheek highlight, see this post; there wasn't much sense in showing you how Diffused looks on my face as the effect is very subtle and hard to capture in a photo, especially when used on top of foundation.

Overall, I do feel that Hourglass did a great job with these Ambient Lighting Powders, and I can see myself using Diffused in my regular rotation (it's probably the best finishing powder I've ever tried... but I haven't tried that many); less so for Luminous, as I tend to shy away from highlighters most of the time. However, I don't feel that these powders are particularly unique or innovative; Guerlain has had that fine perfecting powder thing down with their Meteorites for years, and many brands are now turning in this direction as well. Which is why I won't be rushing to buy the Ambient Lighting Blushes - it's not like we haven't seen soft-focus, radiant blush formulas from other brands, be it baked or undercooked.

What's your take on Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders? Are you planning to purchase anything from their newly released blush line?