Review - Physicians Formula Nude Wear Powder in Light

Hello Princesses!

Today I'm going to be talking about the super cute Physicians Formula Nude Wear Powder that matches the Physicians Formula Nude Wear Blush I talked about last week! I purchased both of these little compacts from Iherb and was super duper excited to try them out because this powder looks like the perfect little contouring quad for pale skin! 

Just like the blusher, this powder has four different coloured powders housed in a cute beige bow clad compact. The Nude Wear letters are embossed with a silvery over-spray which makes the powder incredibly glittery for the first 5ish uses. The compact has a magnetic closure at the front to access the actual quad, and a small back compartment which houses a little brush and mirror.

This picture accurately shows the colours in the quad as I can see them, including the glittery letters. The first square is an almost white highlight colour, the second is a pale yellow colour (banana like, if you will), the third is peachy (great for brightening dark circles) and the fourth is a warm toned brown (strangely great for bronzing).

Just like the blusher, this powder quad is not at all pigmented, and very chalky. The brown shade seems much more pigmented than the other three only because it's substantially darker than my own skin tone, whereas the other three are around the same colour (more or less!).

The instructions on the powders packaging suggest that I should swirl all four shades together to create a flawless base. I say no to this because obviously it would look too dark for my skin all mixed together. I have no use for the banana and peach shades because they just don't show up on my skin whatsoever. 

I can use the bronze powder for Bronzing/Contouring, and the white powder for highlighting. Since the darkest powder is warm toned, I would usually use it to bronze rather than contour (personally I think contouring looks best with a cool toned brown to create a natural shadow) but the little square is so small I can't fit a bronzing brush into it, so it turned into more of a contour than a bronzer for me! You can barely see the bronzer, and you can't see the highlighter at all.

Since the bronzer is so light it does provide a good everyday contoured look for me and works really well for shaping my forehead (my forehead is really short and square) so the bronzer is a win for me. However, I have full sized bronzers that work just as well and the other three powders in the quad are just awful.

What I Love

- Bronze shade works really well

- Cute packaging

What I Don't Love

- I have no other use for the other three powders

- Lighter powders aren't very pigmented

- Layering the powders looks very chalky and tacky

Final Thoughts

This powder quad was a massive fail for me. I had imagined that it would be amazing for a cheap little contour travel kit but in reality only the darkest powder shows up on my skin for bronzing and mixing all four powders together just results in it being way too dark for my face, since the most pigmented powder is the bronzer shade! This quad was just as disappointing as the blusher quad, and for almost $15USD I was expecting it to be substantially better.

Have you been disappointed or had your expectations exceeded by Physicians Formula products?