Break Out Your Brushes, Eyeshadow Is Back

When K-beauty colour cosmetics brand Unleashia launched into Ulta Beauty this past August, the brand assumed its lip products would resonate the most with customers. Instead, a surprising product surged right away.

The nine-pan Glitterpedia palettes “shot straight to the top,” said Sarah Chung Park, the founder of K-beauty distributor Landing International.

Now, these palettes drive 30 percent of the brand’s sales at Ulta Beauty and are its best sellers. Park said Ulta Beauty has shared with her that eyeshadow is “definitely trending up.” (Ulta Beauty declined to comment on this story.)

This experience is not an anomaly. Eyeshadow seems to be mounting a comeback.

Patrick Ta Beauty’s pearly Major Dimension Eye Illusion Eyeshadow Duos, despite some initial consumer backlash to the $42 price, have sold out on its direct-to-consumer site four times since they launched in fall 2024, said Kimberly Villatoro, the brand’s chief executive. Those duos, plus the brand’s six-shade Major Dimension Essential Artistry Edit Eyeshadow Palettes, $44, which launched this October, are two of Patrick Ta Beauty’s top five best sellers so far this year.

Eyeshadows are surging not only in the US, but globally for Sephora, Carolyn Bojanowski, the executive vice president of merchandising at Sephora North America, said in an email. She noted double-digit growth this year in the US, “as well as an uptick in other regions adopting US makeup trends.” She called out the “popularity” of the category in artistry-led brands like Makeup by Mario and Natasha Denona and luxury brands like Armani and Dior Beauty.

With the rise of the post-pandemic “clean girl” era, eyeshadow sales tanked as fragrance, complexion, and (so, so many) tinted lip products dominated the market. Now, eyeshadow has reversed a multi-year sales decline, with some specialty products in the category showing particularly impressive growth. But not all formats are selling equally — simplicity still dominates.

The Eyeshadow Market Glitters Again

Prestige eyeshadow sales have plummeted in the US in recent years, with a sharp 8 percent drop in 2024, coupled with a 3 percent drop in the eye makeup category overall, according to Larissa Jensen, senior vice president at global market research firm Circana.

But this year, through the period ending September 2025, all prestige eye makeup categories returned to growth, with the overall category and eyeshadow sales both up 2 percent. Total eye makeup sales in that time period were $1.7 billion; eyeshadow sales accounted for $331 million.

“The story’s about formats, it’s about innovation,” said Jensen, noting growth in duo and trio palettes.

Several brands, like Danessa Myricks Beauty, Makeup by Mario, Byredo and Isamaya Beauty have launched larger limited edition eyeshadow palettes this fall. Myricks also re-released limited numbers of last year’s palette due to customer demand.

“Palettes have found fandom again,” Sephora’s Bojanowski said. The retailer octupled down on palettes with the fall launch of makeup artist Hung Vanngo’s eponymous brand, which offered eight eyeshadow palettes with eight pans each.

“When we showed Sephora the whole collection, they were so excited that they did not even push back,” on the sheer number of palettes, Vanngo said. More colourways are coming. While the brand sells lip liner, blush and lipstick, an eyeshadow palette has been the number one-selling SKU every week since launch.

Makeup by Mario is the top eyeshadow palette brand at Sephora, according to the brand’s chief marketing officer Oskar Chabrowski. He declined to comment on the sales of this year’s Ethereal Eyes limited edition palette compared to last year’s, but said, “We have been very strong in eyeshadow when everybody else was essentially losing share in that space.”

Still Simply Playing It Safe

While eyeshadow is on the upswing, preferences have evolved.

Mass makeup sales are lagging behind prestige, said Jensen. And not all eyeshadow categories are growing equally, with quad palettes struggling. Stick sales are up 24 percent with liquids up 39 percent, according to Circana data. (Notable recent launches from this past summer in those categories include Danessa Myricks’ metallic/foil dual-ended Colorfix Stix and Makeup by Mario’s Master Mattes Long-Wearing Cream Eyeshadow.)

Spate, a trend forecasting firm, noted that searches for eye palettes on Google and Instagram were down about 40 percent year over year as of November, but gaining on TikTok with a 92 percent increase in views. TikTok views for eye shadow sticks, cream shadows, and nude palettes are up about 250 percent, though views for sticks and creams were primarily driven by paid ads from brands like Danessa Myricks, Colourpop and Makeup by Mario.

Brands offering consumers less dramatic options to draw them back to the eyelid seem to be having the most success so far, despite the 2016 cut-crease nostalgia all over TikTok.

But the spring return of “Euphoria” and the ascendancy of makeup artist Sophia Sinot and her glittery, colourful work on singers like Doja Cat and Zara Larsson, plus the recent signing of makeup champion Chappell Roan as a MAC Cosmetics ambassador, certainly bode well for eyeshadow’s continued growth.

“The category is definitely waking up. We’ll see at the end of the holidays where the chips fall for everybody,” said Chabrowski.

“But there are more offers, more interesting products, more colour coming from multiple brands. It’s getting exciting.”

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