The Urban Decay Wild Greens Palette is a 12 pan palette mainly focusing on greens and oranges along with a few neutrals. There is an even split of mattes and shimmers and also a pretty good balance in the number of shades per color family. The mattes are all fairly similar in texture, color payoff, and overall quality. The shimmers vary from shade to shade, some being smoother with smaller, uniform particles, and others containing a mixture of shimmer and larger sparkles (and the fallout that results from them). It is available for $44 from several retailers including Ulta, Sephora, Nordstrom, Macy’s, and of course Urban Decay.
The mattes have more opacity than the shimmers, apply evenly, blend very easily, and perform consistently across all the shades. They aren’t super intense on pigment but they show up well enough without a ton of effort to build them up. They are pressed loosely enough to make picking color up on my brushes easy but not enough that I get a bunch of kickback in the palette. They felt smooth but slightly dry to the touch. They likely are somewhat dry by the way the shimmers have trouble adhering over the top of them. But I get good wear time out of this palette with primer so this dry quality is something that I’m perfectly fine with. I can wear these all day, even when I’m pretty active and they still hold on well with minimal creasing by the end of the day. Two of them have a tiny amount of sparkle in them (Turmeric and Kale) that shows up much more in the pan than it does on the eye or in swatches. This does cause a tiny bit of sparkle fallout but it is super sparse and hardly noticeable.
The shimmers are sheerer than the mattes and aren’t all that impressive upon first swatch but they do build nicely. They require some help if applied over the mattes but stick just fine over a primer or over bare lids. I have also used them over glitter glue and that works beautifully as well. I would suggest using the shimmers first and then going in with mattes or just using a glitter glue over the mattes. This is the opposite of how I normally apply eyeshadow it might be a drawback to consider if you don’t want to change the order of application. 4 out of the 6 shimmers have larger sparkles and significant sparkle fallout. I like all of those shades so I am willing to put up with it to wear them. I think the choice of shimmer shades perfectly compliments that mattes in the palette and a few of them are somewhat unique. Fuzz is probably the most unique, having a mostly orange look in the pan but an unexpected sparkly teal shift in the light once applied to the eye. Twist is also a kind of unique shade of pale golden green.
Wear time is about 9 hours with primer and 6 hours without primer. This is a little longer wearing on me than average. I typically get about 4 hours of wear time out of eyeshadow without primer.
The packaging is something different for Urban Decay at least from the things I’ve purchased/seen from them in recent memory. It is all cardboard and the lid flips open from the center like two doors and is held shut magnetically. When I have this palette laying on my desk to use it, it takes up a lot of space, but it is possible to completely fold both sides of the lid over the back of the palette without forcing it. Not such a big deal.
Swatches
Chill is a smooth shimmer with only small particles. None of the times I’ve used it required any kind of help. It showed up easily without having to try too hard and I didn’t notice much (if any) fallout from it.
Lo-fi is a soft light peach. I was a bit nervous that this would not show up well on my skintone but I ended up enjoying the color payoff from this shade.
Kickback is a medium neutral brown. It has just enough depth for what I like and complements the oranges and greens in the palette. Blends out easily.
Fuzz is an orange shimmer with a not so obvious blue-green shift. This is a chunkier shimmer with lots of sparkle. It takes a few layers to build it up to a point where the color of it is easier to see. One layer will give me a sparkly wash of indistinct color. If I build up multiple layers, use a wet brush, or apply it over a glitter glue, I can much more clearly tell that there is a blue green shift to the shade.
Turmeric is a matte orange with a bit of large orange sparkle. If I apply this over large area and pack it on, I can see the sparkle but it is still very subtle. There isn’t enough in there that sparkle fallout is really bothersome (or even noticeable) for me.
Hi-vibe looks a lot like Fuzz in the pan but they are pretty different. This one has more of a pinkish base color with a golden shift. This one also has larger sparkles but they are smaller than the ones in Fuzz. While that one has an almost glittery finish, this one is more sublte and glimmering.
Earthside is a light neutral brown. It is light enough to look different from Kickback when they are used side by side and works well as a transtion.
Supergreens is a pastel green. It is difficult to tell if this is more of a yellow or a blue green. Next to Kale, this looks more blue but by itself, it seems to lean more yellow. Beautiful color payoff (much better than I expected), sits nicely on the skin, not dry-looking or chalky.
Prickly is a light blue-green shimmer with a soft yellow sheen and chunkier blue and green sparkles. Needs some help to really get it to show up in a satisfying way.
Twist is more like an accent shade or topper to me. At some angles, it hardly shows up at all and at others it really reflects the light. It seems to be mostly composed of medium sized golden shimmer with a light grey base color that is more obvious when seen from an angle, rather than from straight ahead. It needs to be layered to help it show up more or the shimmer scatters a bit too much.
Kale is another beautifully smooth, pigmented shade that blends easily. This one has some sparkles in it like Turmeric. Same story with this, they don’t show up all that much and there isn’t much fallout from them. This shade is clearly yellow-leaning.
Stash has one of the softer shimmer finishes in the palette, closer to being a satin. Shows up nicely as an olive next to the other shades. No large sparkles.
Looks
Look #1:
- Supergreens – Inner corner
- Lo-fi – Inner crease
- Turmeric – Outer crease
- Hi-vibe – Inner lid
- Stash – Outer lid
- Kickback – Outer lower lashline
- Earthside – Inner lower lashline
- Twist – Center of lower lashline (applied with damp brush)
- Chill – Brow bone
The mattes I used here all performed well. I applied Hi-Vibe with a dry flat brush but it did need some building to adhere well to the lid. Doesn’t show up as nicely as it swatches. Same with Twist, but because I was applying this shade to such a small area, I decided to wet the brush to have better control of placement. Both of these shades had a decent amount of sparkle fallout.
Look #2:
- Supergreens – Transition, center part of lower lashline
- Kale – Inner/outer crease
- Kickback – All over lid
- Prickly – Center of lid (applied with damp brush)
- Twist – Inner corner (applied with damp brush)
- Earthside + Kickback – Lower lashline, outer corner
The shimmers I used here did the same thing as the previous look. I wet the brush for both and had to clean up sparkle dust under my eyes after. For the green on the lower lashline, I used a bit of concealer underneath to help it pop more.
Look #3:
- Turmeric – All over lid, crease
- Lo-fi – Transition
- Fuzz – Center of lid (applied over Too Faced Glitter Glue)
- Chill – Inner corner
- Kickback – Lower lashline
- Hi-vibe – Center of lower lashline (applied over Too Faced Glitter Glue)
For the mattes, I applied the deeper shade first and then went around the edges with the lighter shade. All of the shadows seem to have issues adhering once at least one matte is placed on the lid. It is easier to blend out the deeper shades first than possibly be unable to build up color if applied after. I also decided to use a glitter glue with most of the shimmers (except for the inner corner shade) just to get them to pop. I could have also wet the brush but I feel like using a glitter glue gets me a slightly different result. Lots of sparkle fallout from the chunkier shimmers.
Look #4:
- Kickback – All over lid, crease, outer lower lashline
- Earthside – Transition, inner lower lashline
- Stash – Outer 2/3 of lid (applied over Too Faced Glitter Glue)
I did the same thing with the mattes in this look as I did in Look #3. I probably could have skipped the glitter glue for Stash but I do think it helped the subtle shimmer in it stand out a bit more and give it a little bit more depth.
Look #5:
- Turmeric – Outer lid/crease
- Lo-fi – Transition, inner corner
- Prickly – Inner lid/crease
- Kale – Inner lower lashline
- Fuzz – Outer lower lashline
I used all the shimmers without the help of any setting spray or sticky primers but made a conscious effort to avoid putting them over any of the matte shades. I tried as much as possible to only have them over bare skin or my eyeshadow primer. Prickly adhered best on the eye without any primer and had much less fallout. Fuzz still had a lot of fallout but most of the time this happens when I use chunky shimmers on the lower lashline anyway.
Comparisons
Here are a few of my other palettes with greens in them shown next to the Urban Decay Wild Greens Palette. Above I have the ColourPop Just My Luck and Mint To Be palettes, the Smashbox Desert Palette and the Natasha Denona Mini Gold Palette.
I’d say the two on the bottom have a similar idea going where greens are chosen as compliments to the other shades and you can get something that feels more complete with palettes like these. If you have either of these or have been interested in them, you’d probably like the Wild Greens palette. The shimmers in both of the palettes on the bottom are a bit more opaque in one swatch/layer than those from Urban Decay. However, the mattes in the Urban Decay palette are better than the ones in the Smashbox and Natasha Denona palettes (more consistent quality, easy to build up and blend out, not patchy at all).
The two ColourPop palettes, being monochromatic are more challenging to use alone (at least for me), and I like them better to use alongside other palettes. The main reason I pulled these out was so that you can get a better idea of the depth and tone of the greens in the UDWG palette. The ColourPop shimmers are generally good and consistent in quality but the mattes are kind of hit and miss depending on the shade.