Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Mood Light

I picked up the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Diffused Light when the line first launched and I was not impressed at all.  It was a translucent powder.  A fine powder, but nothing special and certainly not special enough to justify the $45 price tag.  I eventually got rid of my Diffused powder and wasn't interested in learning more.

Then I saw Dustin Hunter's video overview of the line.  Like me, Dustin is on the pastier side of pale and he mentioned that he liked Mood Light as a blush.  I swatched it in Sephora one day and it swatched dark enough on my skin that I was intrigued.

In the pan, Mood Light looks like a very gray purple color.  Like Diffused Light, it doesn't have any detectable shimmer.

The pictures here do not do this product justice.  It definitely has a color.  A subtle color, but still noticeable on my skintone.  I could see deeper skintones using this as an all over setting powder.  That wouldn't work for me at all.  I'd look crazy.

On my skintone, this works as a blush, subtle and natural looking, but with enough oomph to provide definition.  It has good wear time.  I get a good six hours out of it before it faded at all and nine hours before it was gone.

Like the other Ambient Lighting Powders, Mood Light contains 10 grams of product and retails for $45.  It's a baked powder, so it does require gentle handling as it is easy to break off a piece of the product.  Mood Light is available wherever Hourglass is sold.  I picked mine up at Sephora.

Overall:  8/10

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Diffused Light

I had heard people raving about the new Hourglass Ambient Lighting powders, so I decided to pick one up in Diffused Light.  Hourglass describes the powder as "a soft, warm, pale yellow powder that reduces redness and gives skin clarity – like a soft ray of morning light".

This is indeed a beautiful finishing powder.  It is super finely milled, applies like a dream.  It sets makeup beautifully without making you look like a disco ball.  In fact, I really couldn't find any detectable shimmer at all to the powder, though once the whole face was powdered, there was a bit of a ... I guess you could call it a luminosity (nothing terribly glowy and definitely not shiny or oily looking ... just nice).

I'm more than a little skeptical about the yellow powder neutralizing redness.  I really don't think there's enough pigmentation in the powder to really do that.  In fact, it was hard for me to even tell the powder was supposed to be yellow.  It looked like a translucent pressed powder to me.

As I said, this is a beautiful product.  And I am intrigued about the rest of the line.  However, after a week of use, I was soft of left feeling flat.  I really didn't feel like I got incredibly different results from this product than I get from my MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural or even my Sleek Luminous Pressed Powder (both of which have better price points.)  Don't get me wrong, this product is discernibly more higher end than either MAC or Sleek.  But for me, the results were not dramatic enough to warrant the price difference.

Other colors in the range are supposed to have more obvious effects and are intended to be used more as highlighters or even bronzers.  I am much more interested in the colors Dim (neutral peach beige) or Luminous (champagne pearl).

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders contain 10 grams of product and retail for $45 wherever Hourglass is sold.  I got mine at Sephora.

Overall:  7/10