What do you do when you have never tried a particular product from one of your favorite makeup brands? You try it of course! I had never tried any brow products by Urban Decay. So when I wanted to buy one for my full face of Urban Decay, I decided to go completely out of my comfort zone and try a liquid brow product. Meet the Urban Decay Inked Brow brow gel: a waterproof 60 hr longwear brow product that should stay put and still look natural. Are you as nervous as I am?

Review: Urban Decay Inked Brow brow gel Taupe Trap

Yes this product makes me nervous. I am a brow pencil kind of gal: it is quick, it is easy and fuss free. I never even got the hang of using a brow pommade as I found it made my brows too bushy and blocky and I like natural, fluffy brows. So I was skeptical about this at best. Because if this looked bad, it was also supposed to last for nearly 3 days! In any case, this liquid brow product retails for €26 and comes in 7 shades. Taupe Trap is the lightest shade available.

What does Inked Brow have to offer?

As I mentioned, this product is a liquid brow product. It is supposed to be buildable, waterproof and last up to 60 hours. It does recommend to avoid the brows with your cleanser to ensure the longwearing results (which I didn’t do, but I will tell you more below). It is a simple container that doesn’t look too fancy. To me it resembles a lipgloss tube but then it holds a very different product.

What is the product like?

So this product is a liquid as I mentioned. It has quite a strong pigment to it. It is almost like a semi-permanent brow color and so it stains your brows/ skin to ensure the wear time. It comes with a brush applicator but I feel there is too much product on the applicator for me to use it. So I use a very skinny angled brush by Essence that I got years ago. It is one of my favorite brow brushes as it is great at creating natural hair like brush strokes. So I would recommend using your own applicator/ brush with this to avoid bit blotches of product.

What does the product swatch like?

In a swatch it becomes very obvious how liquidy this product is and how much product there is on the brush applicator: too much. The shade isn’t overly warm which is great (lots of lighter brow products have a tendency to lean orange) and the texture is very thin which makes it easy to only apply a little if you’d like. The product blends into the brows seamlessly. I was so surprised when I first tried this! I was afraid to get block brows like I did with a pommade, but this did not have that effect. It looks very natural and it easily fills in any gaps that I have.

What does this product look like on the brow?

Here you can see my natural (very unplucked, oops!) brows, followed by the Urban Decay Inked Brow. The effect of the Inked Brow is a filled in, yet natural effect. It has no issue covering the bold patches. The last picture is of what my brows look like when I also apply my brow gel on top for some extra definition (Glossier Boy Brow in Blond in case you’re wondering). I still like going in with a brow gel with a spoolie with this as it makes my brows look more defined. However, I think that with this you could got with just a brush through without any product on it and you could still have a nice effect.

What is the wear time like?

Since this product boasts a wear time of up to 60 hours I of course wanted to test that out. I made one mistake though: I did cleanse my face with cleanser and didn’t avoid my brow area. To me that also doesn’t make much sense but concealer and foundation are partly in your brows and I want to give my face a good cleanse at the end of the day. I noticed however, as I was cleansing my face that I had to use my cleanser twice on my brows to get the product out. So it is resilient for sure and I feel confident that if you only use water and you do not use a cleanser that breaks up the product this will stay put.

That does mean however that this selection of three pictures is maybe not 100% fair to the product. The first picture is of what my brows look like with the Inked Brow freshly applied. The second picture is what my brows looked like the next day and the last picture was taken a day later. So this would be 48 hours of wear, including cleansing where I didn’t avoid the brow area. As you can see there is still some product left on both days, but I did want to reapply a brow product already on the second day.

My final thoughts

I really like the Urban Decay Inked Brow. It is a bit more work than I normally put into my brows but I really liked the natural effect this give. Not only does it make my brows filled in, but it makes them look fuller, fluffier and this product does last if you don’t mess around with your brows too much. So in the long run I think this is worth it as you can do your brows every few days and then it is worth it to make a bit more of an effort every couple or days or so. This is not a daily product for me though, but definitely great if you are traveling or if you want your brows to just stay put.

Would I recommend the Urban Decay Inked Brow brow gel?

While I really like it, I am not sure this is for everyone. You certainly need some good tools to make it work and you need to be willing to put in the time to apply the product. If you are someone with hardly any brows who struggles with finding good brow products then I think this may be worth it. However, if you already have half-decent brows naturally, then the hassle this puts you through may not be what you are looking for. Plus this product isn’t very beginner friendly. You definitely need to know a bit about brow shapes and what looks flattering on your face before you can use this confidently.

What is a makeup product that makes you nervous?