The Best Bronzers For All Skin Tones & Budgets
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To make life easy, we’ve listed our picks of the best bronzers that offer a range of shades for every skin tone and outlined who they're good for…
The Best Bronzers for 2024
Ilia Beauty
Sun Shift Cream Bronzer, £41.00
Best Bronzer For Sun-Kissed Warmth
When dreaming up the Sunshift Cream Bronzer, ILIA imagined heady days sleeping under the sun, awakening as a gentle tint flushes your cheeks to a healthy, bronzed hue. Designed to recall the radiance of a golden-hour glow, this hybrid bronzer is powered by a series of potent antioxidants and neatly adapts from a silky-soft cream to a whisper-weight powder on the skin, melting seamlessly across your cheekbones in a luminous veil of sunlit warmth.
Chantecaille
Sunstone Real Bronze, N/A
Best Bronzer For A Natural Glow
If it were possible to capture the sun’s golden warmth and spin its luminescence into a sumptuous powder, we think Chantecaille's Sunstone Real Bronze would be it. Finely crafted in Italy, this lightweight, gel-powder formulation is crafted with advanced pearl pigment technology to seamlessly illuminate your cheekbones in a softly-lit radiance and define the angles of your complexion. Did we mention it’s also sculpted to reflect the pattern of the sun’s brilliant rays?
Westman Atelier
Beauty Butter Powder Bronzer, £69.00
Best Bronzer For Skin Nourishment
Founded in 2018 by make-up maverick Gucci Westman, Westman Atelier is imagined as a ‘cosmetic wardrobe’ – revealing a finely edited collection of consciously crafted, innovative formulas designed to enhance your natural features. The Beauty Butter Powder bronzer does just that. Infused with a unique blend of nourishing, plant-powered extracts – including cupuacu butter, cocoa and mango seed – this nourishing formula shields your skin from environmental stressors and carves the contours of your complexion in a velvety kiss of warmth.
Hourglass
Ambient Lighting Bronzer, £56.00
Best Bronzer With A Hint Of Shimmer
Looking for an effortlessly lit-from-within glow? Hourglass is the brand to reach for, and this much-loved powder bronzer with shimmer, inspired by the Ambient® Lighting Powder range. Available in four flexible shades to suit fair, medium, tan and deeper complexions, it’s been created with Hourglass’s innovative Photoluminescent Technology – which essentially means you can expect a radiant, light-reflecting finish. The feel is weightless, the finish is natural yet perfectly defined.
Charlotte Tilbury
Beautiful Skin Sun-Kissed Glow Bronzer, £45.00
Best Cream Bronzer For Dry Skin
One of the latest additions to the Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin family is this gloriously pigmented formula, the brand’s first ever cream bronzer which has unsurprisingly caused a stir on TikTok. Made with hyaluronic acid for extra hydration and provitamin D3, it cleverly follows the skincare benefits of its foundation predecessor and comes in four shades especially suited to medium, tan and deep skin tones. It glides on like a dream on both the face and body – and if you’re after a super smooth application, team it with its fellow Charlotte Tilbury Beautiful Skin Bronzer Brush, £36.00.
Nars
Laguna Bronzing Cream, £38.00
Best Bronzer For Fair Skin
As a sellout sensation and usual suspect in many a makeup bag – our Chief Merchandising Officer Margaret Mitchell swears by it – it’s no wonder Laguna is the inspiration behind NARS’ latest bronzing sensation, Laguna Bronzing Cream. While there are a total of five shades made for all skin tones, if you have fair skin and are looking for a natural glow to complete your tan, we recommend investing in Laguna. It gives your skin a natural looking warm rather than orange.
Rose Inc
Solar Infusion Soft-Focus Cream Bronzer, N/A
Best Cream Bronzer With A Dewy Finish
Beautifully smooth and skincare-inspired, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s cream bronzer is all about adding that subtle glow and dimension to your complexion while simultaneously nourishing your skin. Its genius blend of skin-loving ingredients including squalane, vitamins C and E and rose oil helps blur texture and banish any possible dullness – which means it’ll make you look good both in the short and long term. There are four shades available made to suit fair, medium and deep skin tones (Kauai is Rosie’s favourite).
Laura Mercier
Matte Radiance Baked Powder, £41.00
Best Bronzer For The ‘No Makeup’ Makeup Look
A bronzer that emulates a highlighter might sound too good to be true, but this double act from Laura Mercier does just that. It’s lightweight, velvety texture offers buildable coverage and delivers a radiant warmth that looks just as good on bare skin as it does on a made-up complexion. The first shade from this line does essentially classify as a highlighter; however, there are four more shades on offer that look beautiful on fair and medium skin tones.
Anastasia Beverly Hills
Powder Bronzer, £30.00
Best Matte Bronzer
And because Anastasia Beverly Hills knows aplenty about bronzing and contouring too, we couldn’t not include this bronzing hero that comes in a total of six ultra-flattering shades for fair, medium, olive and dark skin tones. Whether you choose to use this finely milled powder formula for a just-back-from holiday look or for a contoured effect, you’ll love how seamlessly it glides on the skin and how easy it is to work with. Forget flat-matte bronzers, this one has a subtle radiance to it for extra definition.
Glossier
Cloud Paint Gel Cream Bronzer, £22.00
Best Liquid Bronzer
This Glossier bronzer effortlessly blends into the skin to achieve a look that's as natural or as bold as you'd like. It works perfectly with a light foundation, but also on bare skin if you're on a holiday and just need something extra to spice up your makeup.
How To Find The Best Bronzer For You
The key to choosing the right bronzer – and leaving the days of ashy, orangey and glittery finishes behind – is knowing your undertone (look at your wrist veins under natural light). If you have cool undertones, bronzers with a blush, pink or red finish will work best for you. If you believe you sit somewhere in the middle, you’re likely to be able to pull off both warm and cool bronzers – but pinky tones will look especially good.Warm undertones? Bronzers with golden, peachy or yellow tendencies were made for you. And remember – bronzing is about enhancing your natural skin and focusing on where the sun naturally hits your face (the tops of your cheeks, top of your forehead, bridge of your nose and a little on your neck and decolletage). Also, use a light hand when applying – because less really is more.
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