I didn’t take e.l.f. Cosmetics seriously for about three years. That was a mistake, and a fairly common one.
I assumed something had been sacrificed to get the price down. Usually it’s the bit you notice at 4pm. But e.l.f. kept doing this thing where a trend would surface and they’d have a wearable version of it out while people still wanted it. The price never moved. Everything else did.
e.l.f. Cosmetics UK now occupies a strange position in the British beauty market. It’s the brand people recommend slightly sheepishly and then use every single day.
Some of the detail behind it is more considered than the packaging lets on. Every product is vegan and cruelty-free with Leaping Bunny certification. Project Unicorn, running since 2019, has been stripping back unnecessary packaging across the range and has removed more than a million pounds of material so far. None of that is shouted about particularly loudly.
The Gatekeeping Problem
Have a look at e.l.f. Cosmetics and you’ll notice the site isn’t organised like a beauty hall. It reads like a feed. What’s hot sits at the top, then makeup, skincare, fragrance and body. Makeup trends aren’t tucked into a seasonal campaign somewhere. They’re the architecture.
Which gets at something I think is underrated about the brand.
Wanting to try cloud skin or a glassy highlight has never been the hard part. Affording to find out whether it suits you is. At £35 a go, a cream blush in a shade you end up hating is a genuinely annoying thing to have bought. At £7 it’s a Tuesday. e.l.f. has essentially lowered the cost of being wrong, and self-expression doesn’t really function until you can afford to be wrong a few times.
Starting With Skin
The line between e.l.f.’s makeup and its skincare has been dissolving for a while now, and the Halo Glow family sits right on top of the join.
The e.l.f. Halo Glow Liquid Filter (£16) isn’t foundation and doesn’t pretend to be. It’s a glow booster, and the brand gives you four ways to wear it: on its own, over or under makeup, mixed into foundation, or dotted on the high points as a highlighter. Twelve shades. I’d argue it’s less a product than a dial.
If you want SPF doing the work in the same step, the Halo Glow Skin Tint SPF 50 is the lighter tinted version, down to £14 from £18 at the moment.
On the skincare side, the Save Your e.l.f. Hypochlorous Mist is one e.l.f. positions as a soothing, calming, purifying step for the first sign of stress. Useful at 7am. Equally useful over finished makeup at 6pm, which is when I actually reach for things like this. Prime & Stay Finishing Powder at £4 handles setting, and only where you need it.
One Swipe, Done
This is e.l.f. at its most convincing.
The Soft Glam Cream Blush and Bronzer sticks are £7 each and built to be applied with fingers. Which matters a great deal more if you’ve ever done your makeup on a train.
Bronzing Drops give you more room to play. One or two drops into your moisturiser gets warmth across the whole face, and e.l.f. says primer or foundation work just as well. Want it stronger? Straight onto cheekbones and temples instead. There’s also a line in e.l.f.’s own guidance about blending them in with the Liquid Blush Brush (£6) before foundation goes on, which is the sort of detail you only publish when two products were built with each other in mind.
The Last Five Minutes
Most beauty writing pretends the end of a routine is leisurely. It isn’t. You’re late.
The Duochrome Liquid Eyeshadow (£9) is the most trend-literate thing e.l.f. makes right now, giving you the metallic shift that’s been all over social this year without requiring any technique whatsoever. Wow Brow Gel adds tinted definition at £7. The Clear Brow & Lash Mascara, £4, gives structure without colour, which is what I want on days where the goal is looking awake rather than looking finished.
Lips are the same logic. Liner for shape, the Glow Reviver Plumping Lip Oil for shine, and if you’d rather not take any of it too seriously, the limited-edition Squeeze Me Lip Balm range comes in five flavours named after throwback snacks. The whole sequence takes under a minute. Everyday glamour, in practice, is mostly about which minute you spend it on.
Before You Order
A few things worth knowing. UK delivery is free above £25. The Shop & Save bundles group complementary products together for less than buying them separately. Beauty Squad, the loyalty scheme, is free to join and earns points on what you buy, and there are separate student and essential worker schemes with their own eligibility criteria listed on the site.
The big seasonal arrival is the Express Your e.l.f. 24-Day Advent Calendar: 24 makeup and skincare essentials across full and mini sizes, some exclusive to the calendar, in a design you’re meant to decorate yourself. There’s also a limited-edition fragrance and body collection built around Northern Lights and warming spice. Both will go.
I still catch myself being faintly surprised by how much of my makeup bag this brand accounts for. Three years ago I’d have told you modern beauty at this price meant compromising somewhere obvious. I’ve stopped looking for where.
