Urban Decay Naked Heat Swatches and First Impressions

Makeup addicts rejoice! There's always a ton of buzz whenever Urban Decay launches a new palette in their Naked series, and the release of the Naked Heat palette (above) is no exception. Designed to be really warm and fiery, the Naked Heat palette is a welcome new addition to the Naked collection.

The Naked Palette Series Overview

Here's a picture of how the Naked Heat palette stacks up against the first four Naked entries:

Note: I don't own any of palettes in the Naked Basics series since most of those colors repeat in the other palettes or I found I had too many duplicates in my makeup collection to justify owning them.

The original Naked palette was the one that launched a thousand neutral palettes across the makeup industry. It's an old faithful palette for me and likely my favorite one - it has a good blend of warm and cool shades to be able to create a ton of looks. 

The Naked 2 palette is largely a steely, cool-toned palette that includes some great new colors but it's clearly a companion piece to the original palette. With the Naked 3 palette, Urban Decay really created something new by providing an all-rose toned palette perfect for creating naturally blushing eye looks with enough darker colors in there to create a classic UD edgy look.

The Naked Smoky palette was a great palette in theory but I found the formulas to be a little patchy. It was the first misstep in the Naked palette series because Urban Decay is deservedly known for having one of the best shadow formulas in the industry. Perhaps my palette is from a bad batch, but for as much as I want to love the palette I have to admit that it's amongst my least-reached for because I have to work with the shadows quite a bit in order to achieve the look I'm going for. 

At first glance, the Naked Heat palette was totally up my ally - warm, fiery colors and a good mix of mattes and shimmers to have a lot of fun with creating plenty of looks. But there was a lot of talk that the palette had patchy swatches and that the formula once again might be at issue. But as an UD fan, I still wanted to give the palette a shot.

Naked Heat Swatches

Here are the first four shades in the palette - Ounce, Chaser, Sauced and Low Blow:

• Ounce (shimmer) is a super pale highlighting shade with a slight touch of shimmer. It's great under the brow bone or in the inner corner.
  
• Chaser (matte) is a nice matte highlight shade for darker skin tones or a good crease color for lighter skin tones.
  
• Sauced (matte) is a deeper matte crease shade or outer-v shade for lightly smoking or blowing out color.
  
• Low Blow (matte) is that perfect muddy shade that with light pressure can work as a crease color or with heavier pressure can work as an all-over lid shade or outer-v shade.

Here are the next four shades - Lumbre, He Devil, Dirty Talk and Scorched:

• Lumbre (metallic) is the first truly glittery, metallic shade in the palette. It picked up smoothly with minimal kick-back, which was super impressive since glittery shades tend to have fallout and kick-back. I think using this shade wet (you can use setting spray or eye drops to wet your shadows) would create a really great look.
  
• He Devil (matte) is the shade I likely love the most but admittedly didn't swatch too well. It felt super smooth when I picked it up so I'm hopeful that when I properly work with it that I'll enjoy it more. It's the one color that I think every single person can get some use out of no matter what their skin color or tone - with the right pressure or brush, anyone can make this shade work for them.
  
• Dirty Talk (metallic) is a warmer, deeper version of Lumbre and has a much better formula. It's missing some of the glittery elements that Lumbre has so it's far smoother and swatched really well.
  
• Scorched (metallic) is somewhere between Dirty Talk and Lumbre - shimmery and metallic in formula and somehow a hybrid of these two shades. This is another color that I suspect would come to life if it's applied wet.

And here are the final four colors - Cayenne, En Fuego, Ashes and Ember:

• Cayenne (matte) is a great matte shade but again, it didn't swatch very well. Still, it's a good transition shade for creating darker smoky looks and felt good when picked up, so I'm hopeful that it'll work better when it's being used.
  
• En Fuego (matte) is a color I'm really looking forward to using - it's a wearable brick shade that I think will make for some super cool looks. I feel like I don't have another shade quite like it in my eyeshadow collection, which I appreciate - with as many eyeshadow palettes that are available on the market, it's tough to be innovative with shades.
  
• Ashes (matte) is this palette's smoking out shade. Just about every palette includes a black eyeshadow to allow you smoke out your eye look, but when it's literally in every palette, it becomes unnecessary to keep including it. Ashes is a purply-hued dark brown that complements the orange-toned shades in this palette and will be great for smoking out or even doubling up as an eyeliner.
  
• Ember (metallic) is hands down the shade I'm most excited about - I love a good bronzy eyeshadow and this one is fantastic. It was super pigmented and smooth when I picked it up and swatched like a dream. It has enough of a dark base to it that it lends itself nicely to the rest of the palette.

First Impressions

• I totally understand the swatch controversy - admittedly, this palette is gorgeous but not every color swatched well. Remember that matte formulas tend to be drier and as a result won't necessarily swatch well. But every single shade in this palette had a wonderfully smooth formula and felt great to the touch and while swatching the shadow.

• I'm happy that Urban Decay is keeping the Naked palette series going and that they're going for different versions - there are now so many ways to create a neutral look and by introducing palettes themed around a specific tone, they're really creating the palettes that you need, not just want.
  
• I'm still road-testing the wearability of the formula, but so far, so good! I used Ounce, Lumbre and Sauced with a fluffy brush to create a daytime look and they worked really well - even Lumbre, as a metallic, did well without the benefit of a firm synthetic brush (the preferred brush for working with metallics.)
  
• Orange is a tricky color to work with and doesn't always work on most people. But Urban Decay introduced 12 shades that really do have good universal appeal - these are the oranges that are most likely to work on most people. And even as someone who normally tends to be orange-averse, this palette really speaks to me. Though this is a summer launch, the colors are solid enough to be worn all year long - I'm super excited to see how it'll look in the fall!
  
• On to the nerdy review - the packaging and layout. I've never been a fan of the brushes that come with UD palettes so I abandoned the double-ended brush they supplied with the Naked Heat palette. But the packaging is super sturdy and feels like it'd do well in travel, and the layout of the shadows is wonderful - the first four shades provide the foundation (highlight and crease), the next four shades provide outer-v or lid highlight colors, and the last four provide great shades for the lid or smoking out eye looks. I appreciate layouts that make using the products easy and fool-proof so that the product becomes accessible for anyone to feel comfortable using, and this fits the bill.

***

The Naked Heat palette is definitely worth checking out. It's a solid addition to the Naked series and there are enough unique shades here to make it worth the expense. Anyone who loves warm neutrals will really want to play with this palette and will finally have orange-toned shades that really work well since every shade in this palette is usable (a rarity in palettes.)