Have you ever finished applying a full face of makeup only for it to still look a bit flat? Bronzer may be the missing piece of the puzzle that’s preventing your look from coming alive. Using bronzer is similar to contouring, except that where the contour is meant to add dimension by shaping and sculpting the face, celebrity makeup artist Uzo explains that “bronzers are a shortcut to adding natural-looking warmth and a sun-kissed glow to the skin” all without stepping foot in the sun. 

While having radiant, summery skin year-round sounds pretty dreamy, we can’t bask in our bronze without considering a couple of factors first, like our skin tone, skill level at applying the product, and whether our complexion is better suited to creams, powders, or liquid formulas.

Best Overall

Fenty Beauty Sun Stalk’r Instant Warmth Bronzer

What We Love: This beloved bronzer has an inclusive shade range, each one boasting the same highly-pigmented, lightweight formula and natural matte finish. 

What We Don’t Love: Blending it out requires some patience. 

Even if all three of our experts hadn’t sung the praises of this Fenty bronzer (which they did with gusto), we’d probably still list it as our top choice. Its ever-growing fan base is partially due to the impressive shade range — not only is it more extensive than its other competitors, but the brand created colorways with a “range of undertones, especially for darker complexions,” says makeup artist Kyle Brown. Translation: Everyone can take advantage of the bronzer’s stunning attributes.

And, trust us, it has plenty, starting with the highly pigmented formula that’s buildable and “great for creating that bronzed, sculpted look when you want additional dimension and definition,” says Uzo. Not to fret if you prefer a more natural beat — between the lightweight feel and impeccable shade matching, the bronzer melts into complexions like a second skin. To truly replicate the appearance of a successful beach day, we suggest spending some extra time blending the bronzer with a sculpting or contour brush for a fully diffused finish. 

Your now sun-soaked skin is also courtesy of several tropical-themed ingredients, like mango and papaya fruit extracts which have hydrating benefits that provide the bronzer with its creamy texture and rejuvenate your complexion.

Key Ingredients: Papaya fruit extract, mango fruit extract, glycerin | Shades: 9 | Finish: Matte | Size: 0.22 oz

Best Budget

ColourPop Bronze Stix

What We Love: The conveniently-sized tubes are small enough to take with you everywhere and this long-wearing formula will last through it all.

What We Don’t Love: It feels a little tacky when you first apply it.

Packaged in a tube that’s slimmer than our lipstick, we’re considering these ColourPop Bronze Stix our travel companion on any future trips. And, even if that’s not somewhere sunny, we’ll be able to fake like it was since each of the six shades looks natural on bare skin.

Similar to the brand’s cream eye shadow sticks, they too glide across our skin as seamlessly as a serum, and never pill or leave a trail of clumpy product in their wake. They also parallel the eyeshadow in terms of application, with the stick style allowing you to directly apply the bronzer to your skin so you can target the parts of your face you want to enhance, like say the very top of your cheekbones or right below your hairline.

We hesitated when we initially applied it because although it blended beautifully with our other makeup, it did feel a little tacky to the touch. Thankfully, once it dried down we didn’t notice this aspect anymore, and we think it may be the key behind its long-staying power.

Key Ingredients: Beeswax, carnauba wax | Shades: 6 | Finish: Matte | Size: 0.28 oz

Best Drugstore

Physicians Formula Murumuru Butter Bronzer

What We Love: The radiant shades blend out like a dream thanks to the emollient-rich formula that gives the bronzer a soft, malleable texture. 

What We Don’t Love: It has a slight fragrance that may not appeal to everyone.

If you ask us, between its attractive packaging and luxurious-feeling formulas, products from this drugstore brand could easily camouflage themselves among pricier ones. Example A: The Butter Bronzer. It’s cruelty-free, full of nourishing ingredients, and it is “beginner-friendly due to its smooth texture and blendability,” says celebrity makeup artist Elizabeth Seropian.

As its name implies, the velvety consistency comes from the inclusion of murumuru butter. This is a natural plant-based butter rich in lauric acid, an antibacterial and hydrating fatty acid you may recognize from your facial cleansers. We should also note that the included fragrance might trigger some sensitive noses. On the flip side, its light coconut scent provides a pleasant air of nostalgia to anyone longing for time spent on the sand. 

Key Ingredients: Murumuru, cupuacu, and tucuma butters | Shades: 8 | Finish: Luminious | Size: 0.38 oz

Best for Dry Skin

NARS Bronzing Cream

What We Love: Despite having a creamy base, the bronzer dries down to a natural matte finish that won’t skip over textured skin or cling to dry patches.

What We Don’t Love: The rich formula can be intimidating for beginners.

If you’re not into a super dewy look but have found that powders emphasize the texture of your complexion, we found your solution: The rich, creamy formula of this Nars bronzer. It’s a terrific alternative to powders, particularly “when there are concerns involving bronzing powder settling into fine lines, dry patches or uneven skin texture,” says Uzo. 

Uzo also tells us that you’ll still receive a soft matte finish — a boon for anyone with combination skin that’s oily and dry. It pulls off this feat using monoi de Tahiti, an oil derived by soaking the Tiaré flower in coconut oil. It moisturizes your skin to prevent a muddy appearance while giving the bronzer a balm-like texture that keeps it from sliding around and transferring onto your shirt collar. 

A word to the wise: Blending it out for the first time may not be totally intuitive if you’re typical M.O. is liberally piling on sheer powders (a little of this goes a long way). Still, even if you overapply the formula, buffing it out takes no time when you use a  stippling brush or your fingers.

Key Ingredients: Monoi de Tahiti, coconut oil, gardenia flower extract, plumeria rubra flower extract | Shades: 5 | Finish: Natural | Size: 0.67 oz

Best for Contouring

Patrick Ta Crème Contour + Powder Bronze Duo

What We Love: Between a super blendable formula and a cream and powder shade, you can create a multitude of looks with the palette. 

What We Don’t Love: The cream may be a little too shimmery for anyone who likes a super matte finish. 

The word (and products) on everyone’s lips is that Patrick Ta, who has fans like Megan Fox and Emily Ratajkowski, knows how to create products with range. This cream contour and powder duo emphasizes his masterful artistry by providing us with everything we need in one very aesthetically pleasing package. 

Brown swears by it, saying that “the creme contour is great for sculpting prior to setting your base and then adding warmth with the powder bronze.” If you don’t like a dewy look, we’d follow Brown’s advice for applying it since the cream leaves skin a little shimmery. However, overlaying your look with the bronzer mutes the glimmer for a gorgeous natural matte finish. 

And, if we only have five colorways to choose from, we’re glad they’re these ones since they cater to all undertones and have a nice diversity of shade depth. 

Key Ingredients: Jojoba seed oil, sunflower seed oil | Shades: 5 | Finish: Natural | Size: 0.24 oz (cream) and 0.23 oz (powder)

Best Matte Finish

Anastasia Beverly Hills Cream Bronzer

What We Love: Shockingly lightweight, this formula still has the luxurious feel of a rich cream without a hint of heaviness.

What We Don’t Love: When we say it dries down into a very matte finish, we mean very matte, so if your vibe leans more dewy, it’s not a match.

Picking up a pot of dense, highly pigmented cream bronzer can admittedly be intimidating if you’ve never done it before. A heavy-handed application that you can’t undo without washing it all off or the bronze shade fading into an orange undertone are the stuff of nightmares. But we’ve been using this cream bronzer for years, and while the pigment has immediate payoff with just one layer, the bronzer’s buttery soft texture means that it's not the end of the world if you accidentally overdo it — just buff it out with a fluffy brush and no one’s the wiser. 

For ultimate control and precision, lightly swirl a fingertip in the pot to warm it up (making it even easier to blend) and once your fingertip has a bit of product on it, gently dot the bronzer onto your cheek in a stippling motion until it melts into your complexion. 

Key Ingredients: Sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, vegan beeswax | Shades: 10 | Finish: Matte | Size: 1 oz

Best for Beginners

Rare Beauty Bronzer Stick

What We Love: Using a blend of natural plant extracts this bronzer douses skin with a hydrating, creamy formula that blends seamlessly into a natural finish. 

What We Don’t Love: Some of the shades appear too orange on cooler-toned skin.

Who among us hasn’t pinned Selena Gomez pinned to our mental skinspiration boards upon seeing her stunning complexion? Sure, maybe it naturally radiates from the career high of being a successful singer, actress, and business mogul, but we also have to imagine this breakthrough bronzer from her editor-adored cosmetics line may have something to do with it.

The stick-style applicator eliminates the need for additional tools and makes achieving a believable glow about as effortless as if you didn’t apply makeup at all. And, on that same note, it won’t look like you did as the weightless formula avoids clumping around dry patches and textured skin or settling into fine lines.

In fact, it may improve the look of your skin since it contains lotus, gardenia, and white water lily botanicals, the summation of which contributes to a soothing feel and defense against redness or irritation. Plus, since it's non-comedogenic, we’re not worried about it causing congestion on our acne-prone or oily skin.

We’re equally over the moon to see it’s now offered in eight shades with more options for our cooler-toned friends — hopefully, Bright Side and On the Horizon, two shades specifically formulated for this undertone, will answer their pleas for a shade that doesn’t give them an orangey finish.

Key Ingredients: Meadowfoam seed oil, gardenia fruit extract, sunflower seed oil, lotus flower extract, water lily extract | Shades: 8 | Finish: Natural | Size: 0.25 oz

Best Cream Bronzer Palette

Stila Sculpt & Glow Contour + Highlight Palette

What We Love: This seven-pot mix of bronzers, highlighters, and a pop of berry is a one-stop shop for a natural glow.

What We Don’t Love: We wish there was more than one blush shade, although it seems to look universally fabulous across skin tones.

It can be difficult to achieve skin with the perfect level of luminosity but not shiny, dewy but not glossy or sticky, topped with a filter-grade blur with just powder. To create a snatched jawline or cheekbones so chiseled that look like they were sculpted by Greek gods, but in a quietly glamorous way, like the way your skin looks immediately after getting a facial, we rely on cream contour palettes, and this one from Stila is the only all-in-one complexion palette you'll ever need.

 It contains four different matte creams in a gradient of bronzes from light to medium to deep that feel like melted chocolate for the way they so easily glide across skin. They're quite rich and pigmented, but the flexible, creamy formula makes it a snap to buff and blend down if you find that your application was too heavy-handed. To finish, simply dot and tap the sheer, buildable berry across your cheeks until it looks like a seamless wash of color, and finish with one (or both, why not!) of the two highlight colors, a shimmery champagne and a transparent, glossy balm for days when you want to be sparkle-free, but still dewy and glowing.

Key Ingredients: Rosehip seed oil, rice bran extract, shea butter, mimosa flower, rosemary leaf extract, avocado oil, aloe vera extract | Shades: 7 | Finish: Dewy | Size: Various

Best for Sensitive Skin

LYS Beauty No Limits Bronzer Stick

What We Love: Ingredients like rosehip oil and hyaluronic acid result in a creamy, blendable formula and it leaves out allergens that could potentially irritate sensitive skin.

What We Don’t Love: The fine point on the triangle base applicator may break if you press down too hard. 

The LYS Bronzer stick picked up steam on TikTok when users marveled at how, like magic, it melted into the skin and blended out with minimal effort. Once we delved deeper into the ingredient list we not only got a better understanding of how it achieves this, but we soon discovered that the formula is really fantastic for those with acne-prone or sensitive skin.

Through the use of lightweight, non-comedogenic oils like rosehip it keeps the consistency of bronzer silky without clogging pores. Additionally, soothing extracts like watermelon and green tea will calm redness or rosacea and exacerbate irritated skin.

Its unique triangle base is another selling point for us — the fine point makes it so easy to draw thin streaks along the jawline and side of the nose while contouring. The only catch is that we worry that the tip could break off easily, so we’ll be extra careful to use a light hand while applying it. 

Key Ingredients: Rosehip oil, green tea extract, sodium hyaluronate | Shades: 5 | Finish: Natural | Size: 0.25 oz

Best for Mature Skin

Ogee Sculpted Face Stick

What We Love: Ogee nailed the trifecta of anti-aging makeup: Hydrating ingredients, easy application, and a skin-like finish.

What We Don’t Love: You have to work for a strong color payoff, but we like to customize a bronzer’s intensity, so we didn’t mind this one bit.

Ogee is a skin-forward makeup brand — with a recently launched skincare collection, too — and it ticks all the boxes for products that aren’t going to just make you look good, but they’re good for you, too. 

Cold-pressed jojoba oil, peppermint essential oil, hyaluronic acid, and coffee seed oil, are just a few of the nourishing hydrators on a roster stacked with other natural, plant-based, and 83 percent organic ingredients. These emollients are great for moisturizing mature skin, which tends to err on the dry side, but the creamy texture won’t slide all around your face or settle into fine lines or wrinkles. In fact, the hydrating additions also provide a plumping effect that looks beautiful on aging skin. 

Key Ingredients: Olive oil, jojoba seed oil, coconut oil, tapioca powder | Shades: 12 | Finish: Slight shimmer | Size: 0.2 oz

Best for Glowy Skin

Merit Sculpting Bronzer

What We Love: We can’t get enough of the silky texture, smooth application, and soft lit-from-within radiance. 

What We Don’t Love: Although it’s buildable, it’s also definitely sheer for the first few swipes.

For chilly winter days we want to remember what it feels like to have a warm beam of sun flash across your body, we go for the next best thing — a sun-kissed, glowy complexion that radiates a “Why yes, I did just return from a long weekend in Miami” vibe.

One of our favorite things about this low-key brand is that they keep their collection right and tight. The small, curated selection of Bella Hadid-adored lipsticks and Carrie Brmaadshaw-obsessed blushes, among many more, stands out for its easy, low key formula and foolproof application (we’re serious — you couldn’t mess it up if you tried, thanks to the sheer-ish hue).

Swiping a wash of color across your forehead and cheekbones isn’t a scary experience with this bronzer stick — the balm-like texture means that it hydrates as it glides across skin, giving the look of a dreamy glow that is buildable and shimmer-free.

Key Ingredients: Fatty acids, vitamin E | Shades: 5 | Finish: Natural | Size: 0.44 oz

Best Stick

Nudestix Matte Cream Blush

What We Love: This product takes the guesswork out of how to apply bronzer, allowing you to easily swipe it on and blend it out with the brush on the other side of the dual-ended tool.

What We Don’t Love: Oily skin types will need a good setting spray or primer to increase its wear time. 

Bronzing may be the much more manageable cousin to contouring, but applying them still requires skill. So, we were thrilled when Brown recommended this product to anyone looking for an easy makeup routine. Its dual-ended applicator simplifies the process by including a cream bronzer on one side and a blending brush on the other.

Actually, the tool is fantastic at streamlining your entire makeup routine. It quickly warms your complexion with just one swipe, and once you’re done, you can swirl it onto your eyelids, dab it on your lips, and get one good look at your reflection before jetting out the door. The pinker shades, like Beach Babe and Sunkissed Cool, would also look swell as a blush on the apple of your cheeks.

No matter what path you decide to take, just don’t forget to spritz your skin with a top-notch setting spray before you go as the formula may wear off after a few hours of running around. 

Key Ingredients: Vitamin E, kaolin clay | Shades: 8 | Finish: Natural | Size: 0.25 oz

What to Keep in Mind

• Finish: Whether you choose a matte or radiant finish depends on the look you want to achieve. If you’re seeking an all-over radiance, try a cream bronzer with a shimmery formula will really accentuate whatever areas you apply it to. Matte finishes tend to look a bit more natural and can work well if you’re trying to define a certain area of the skin, such as the high points of your cheekbones, or if you want to add shadows back into your features after applying foundation.
• Formula: Since powder bronzers only require a strategic sweep across the areas you want to add warmth, they’re a pretty popular choice. Many have natural matte finishes that make them an excellent option for those with oily skin, as it will mattify any shininess, while still feeling lightweight enough that it won’t look cakey on skin. However, don’t be intimidated to try out a cream or liquid bronzer either, even if you do have more shine on your skin. Many formulas on this list have a lightweight texture that blends into complexions seamlessly for soft, pillowy-looking skin without the added dewiness. And though liquid formulas could require a bit more skill to use because they’re typically very pigmented, we opt for this type of bronzer when we want to add hydration back into dry complexions or seek a more dramatic look.

Your Questions, Answered 

What is the difference between a bronzer and a contour?

Bronzers have so many stellar qualities, but at their core, they warm up complexions for a natural, lit-from-within radiance. Meanwhile, Brown says that “contour is for shaping the face and defining the structure” by creating the illusion of dimension. He adds that contour shades are “usually more matte and cool-toned, whereas bronzer can also be matte, but most have a natural shimmer to create an overall glow.”

However, keep in mind that makeup really has no rules, especially when it comes to a product as versatile as a bronzer. You can mimic the appearance of shadows, similar to how you would with a contour, by taking a deep-shaded bronzer to the inner hollows of your cheek. Or, alternatively, you can use a lighter contour shade to add warmth to the top of your cheekbones or jawlines. At the end of the day, it’s whatever gets the job done and feels most fun.

How do you find the best bronzer shade?

Regardless of your skin tone, Brown says the first rule of thumb in choosing a bronzer suitable for you is to go one or two shades deeper than your natural skin tone.

But it’s not enough to only look at the depth of the bronzer’s shade, says Uzo, who adds that considering its undertone and finding one that matches yours, whether it's cool, neutral, or warm, is equally important.

In general, Seropian says warm undertones work well with yellow, peach, or golden hues. For neutral undertones, “a light tan brown shade gives the most natural glow without looking orangey,” says Uzo. Finally, soft colors such as beiges and light pinks will complement cool undertones best. 

How do you apply bronzer?

Brown says to start by thinking of the areas where the sun would naturally hit your skin: The top of your forehead, cheekbones, bridge of your nose, and sides of your jawline. 

Then, Uzo recommends taking a large, medium-density powder brush to these parts of your face to create a subtle definition. If you prefer a more chiseled look, she adds that you can apply the bronzer “to the perimeter of the forehead (along the hairline), hollows of the cheekbones, and under the jawline” with a smaller, denser angled brush.

Why Shop with Us 

Irene Richardson is a fashion and beauty commerce writer for InStyle. For this story, she researched and tested dozens of bronzers. She also consulted three celebrity makeup artists, Uzo, Kyle Brown, and Elizabeth Seropian.

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