Is it worth repairing broken makeup?

by Basic Beauty Tools
May 9, 2019
3 min read

Updated: Nov 25, 2019

Ough, don’t we just hate it when this happens to an eye shadow, your favourite compact or powder blusher? It certainly hurts when it happens to an eye shadow palette that you just paid £68 for. Are you to throw it away or try repairing it?

There are a few things you can do.

Repairing it

This is fairly easy as you only need a little amount of rubbing alcohol and mix that in with the broken eye shadow, blush or powder compact. First thing you need to do is decant all of the makeup into a little bowl and crush it up to a fine powder. Then add the rubbing alcohol to it and make a paste. Put this back into the compact case and let it dry. Then press it in and your makeup is ready to be used again. The only disadvantage of doing this is that it will never be as firm and strong as it was before and there is a risk (as with adding the rubbing alcohol you changed the original formula) that the product will not spread as easily onto the skin. It could perform a bit patchy or streaky.

Re-purposing it

There are two other interesting options that can be done to avoid throwing out very expensive broken makeup. One is to stick with step one and decant the makeup into a bowl and crushing it into a fine powder but then leaving it as a powder. You can easily buy refillable pots at the drugstore and put the powder in. The advantage of this method is that you don’t change the original formulation and the product should still perform as it did before it broke.

The other thing you could do is to create a totally new product with it. Scrape all the broken eye shadow or powder out of its original container and crush it into a fine powder, then add that powder to clear nail polish. You then have created a very original brand-new shade of nail polish.

Accept it is irreparable

Accept that it is broken and irreparable and buy either a new version of the product or try to find a cheaper high street alternative that’s a fraction of the price. It would not be such a blow to the budget when it would break and is more easily replaceable if it does break into a million pieces.

Obviously, we don’t want to waste any product and certainly when it’s a special colour or makeup from an expensive brand where we paid a lot of money for. It’s worth exploring whether you can repair it or maybe would be happy with the product if it was in a loose powder. If either of these options would not work, you can still part with the product but it gives you to think that it might be better to find a cheaper dupe that you would be just as happy with. High street brands are getting better and better and when an eye shadow or highlighter is only £6 to £10 it is not such a big deal if it breaks. What method would you go for when your compact makeup breaks?