All of the Lorac Pro Palettes are 30% off at Ulta until tomorrow (03/28/20). I currently own five palettes from the brand and two of them are Pro Palettes, the Pro 1 and Pro 4. At full price, the Pro Palettes are $39.00 but during this sale they’re $27.30.  I won’t have time to review the Pro 4 before the sale is over but the great thing about Lorac is their formula is ALWAYS consistent. If you’ve tried one shadow from Lorac, you’ve tried them all. Let’s get into the review and I’ll let you know if I think they’re worth buying.

The Lorac Pro 1 is an OG of the makeup world. I got into makeup later than most people and up until last year, I had never tried anything from the brand. I tested out some of their newer palettes first but during a sale, the Pro 1 was less than $20.00. The color story didn’t excite me but I thought it would be a good neutral palette to have. I also knew this palette had been a favorite of so many people for years and I wanted to see if I would love it too… Unfortunately, I didn’t. Time for pros and cons!

Pros:

• The packaging is sturdy cardboard with a magnetic closure and a mirror.
• The Lorac matte formula has been consistently great across all the palettes that I’ve tried from them and it’s no different with this one. They’re pigmented but incredibly blendable. I had no issues with fallout as long as I tapped off my brush. I reach into this palette all the time to use the mattes in other looks. I did have one small issue with some of the mattes in this palette but I’ll talk about that in the cons section.
• This is the ultimate work appropriate palette. The color story does’t inspire me but it’s useful.
• The color story makes sense and it’s easy to create looks using this palette alone.
• I love that there is an even ratio of mattes to metallics, eight of each. The top row is all matte and the bottom row is all metallic.

Cons:

• I absolutely loathe the Lorac metallic shadow formula in every palette. That means half of this palette is unusable for me. Issue one, this formula burns my eyeballs. It doesn’t burn my eyelids or the skin around my eyes but my actual eyeballs. If any fallout gets in my eyes, it burns like crazy. The irritation did dissipate pretty quickly but I’m sensitive to something in this formula. I checked the ingredients and they contain extracts of lemon peel, cucumber, parsley, etc so I’m assuming that I’m sensitive to one of the natural ingredients. Issue two, these shadows look nowhere near as intense on the eyes as they do in swatches. I tried using my finger, a wet brush and a dry brush but I just couldn’t get them to be as intense as I wanted. Issue three, quite a few of the metallics were patchy and took a lot of building up. If I used a wet brush, patchiness wasn’t an issue but they would cake up and look awful. I’ve had this same problem with Morphe eyeshadows. They caked up around my inner corner regardless of if I used them wet or dry. Issue four, the metallic shades do not play well together. I love to mix my eyeshadows and create my own duochrome shades but that’s impossible with this formula. They either become a muddy mess OR they’re so opaque that they cancel out whatever shade they’re on top of.
• All of these shadows are pigmented but they tend to be on the lighter side. I’m clearly not a person of color but I think anybody with deeper skin than mine would struggle to make a lot of these shades work.
• For some reason, these shadows did not want to stick to the inner part of my eye. This has always been an issue with Lorac metallics but even the mattes in this palette wouldn’t stick as well as I wanted them to.
• The metallic shade, Champagne, has a lot of shimmer particles and they get everywhere. They also disappear throughout the day and the shadow ends up looking very lackluster.

The picture on the left shows how crinkled/caked up looking the shadows are. I only have this issue with Lorac metallics and some Morphe shadows. The picture on the right shows how none of the shades would stick to that area of my eye. I tried using the matte shadow, Mauve, and the metallic shadow, Nude.

Swatches & Shade Descriptions:

These eyeshadows do have names and shade descriptions on the website. Most of the shade names are self explanatory, however. I’ll be going from left to right, top row to bottom row.

-Mattes:

• White
• Cream
• Taupe- light brown
• Light Pink– cool pink
• Mauve
• Sable- red brown
• Espresso– dark brown
• Black

-Metallics:

• Nude– light beige
• Champagne– pink pearl
• Gold– yellow gold
• Light Bronze– light golden bronze
• Pewter– silver mauve
• Garnet– red copper
• Deep Purple– deep purple
• Slate– deep blue gray

Eyeshadow Looks:

I created two looks using this palette alone. I did create a few other looks but I hated the way they turned out. I have tried every shade in this palette multiple times but you won’t see Pewter, Lt. Bronze or Slate below. Their formula is identical to all the other metallics in this palette.

I always use the essence Colour Intensifying Primer. When explaining the looks, I will go in the order of the swatches on my wrist; left to right and top to bottom. You can click on the pictures to see them better. Since these eyeshadows do have names, I won’t be describing where they are in the palette or what they look like.

This look turned out very meh. It’s not one I would do again. This isn’t really a con but the shade Garnet doesn’t look red on the eye at all once blended or smudged out; it just looks brown. I wanted a pop of red on the lower lash line and this shade just didn’t give that to me.

1. I set my primer with Cream.
2. I blended Taupe lightly above my crease.
3. I blended Sable underneath Taupe and throughout my entire crease, except the deepest part.
4. I deepened my crease with Espresso and blended it together with Sable. I also applied it over the majority of my lid.
5. I applied Gold over the rest of my lid and in my inner corner.
6. I applied Nude on my brow bone.
7. I applied Lt. Pink in my waterline.
8. I lined my lower lash line with Espresso and smudged Garnet underneath it.

From a distance, this look is pretty but it has its issues. As I mentioned above, Champagne lost all of its sparkle and shine throughout the day. Mauve and Nude would not stick to the inner corners of my eyes. Last but not least, Deep Purple just looked black when smudged out on the lower lash line. Overall, the look is fine but it’s not what I wanted.

1. I set my primer with Cream.
2. I blended Mauve into the crease and applied it on the inner/outermost parts of my lid.
3. I applied Lt. Pink in the center of my lid and in my waterline.
4. I applied Champagne on top of Lt. Pink in the center of my lid.
5. I applied White in my inner corner. I then applied Nude on top of White and on my brow bone.
6. I lined my lower lash line with Black and smudged Deep Purple underneath it.

Brushes Used:

• Detail Crease Brush
• Tapered Blending Brush
• Flat Eyeshadow Brush
• Small Angled Brush
• Smudge Brush
• Eye Crease Brush
• Blending Brush, I used this brush to blend out the edges.

If you are curious about any of the other products on my face, you can find these looks in my recent posts on Instagram.

Final Thoughts:

Unfortunately, I don’t recommend the Pro Palettes, even at 30% off. I do really like the mattes and if you can get the palettes for around 50% off, I think they’re worth it. I do absolutely love Lorac’s Lux Diamond Palette and Effortless Glamour Mini Palette. Both of those have a newer formula that is MILES above the original metallic formula. Of course, my opinion is in the minority because most people love the Pro Palettes. I advise looking at as many reviews as possible and just using your best judgement. If you’ve tried them, I’d love to know what you think about the Pro formula. Are you planning to pick up any of the palettes? Let me know! Thanks for reading and have a great day!