3 Dial Mascaras

Recently there appears to be a new trend in mascara land, called the 3 Dial Mascaras.

Essentially how they work is you can reduce or expand the size of the barrel that the mascara wand is pulled through. Reducing the size will wipe off more of the product, where as increasing the diameter of the barrel will wipe off less of the product. The idea is the more product on the wand, the more volumising your mascara application will be, and the less you use, the more defined and “daytime friendly” your mascara will become.

It’s an interesting concept that hasn’t particularly wowed me since I tend to go full volume at all times since my lashes are naturally dark, just defining them has no impact. But I can see this being popular among people who either don’t wear very much makeup, or those with lighter hair so that the difference between a light and heavy mascara application is more apparent on them.

So far I’ve been able to try the Rimmel 3 Dial which was given to me at the Melbourne Beauty Bloggers Event (but you can purchase it from Priceline or any supermarket for $18.95AU) and Almay which I purchased from Priceline for $19.95AU, and each of them have 3 dials.

1 – lightest coverage
2 – medium coverage
3 – heaviest coverage

Out of the two, my vote goes to Almay just for the packaging and formula. Some notes that came to mind, note that the swatch images were taken with dials set to 3.

Rimmel

• No smudging for over 10 hours
• Dial 3 gives me clumpy lashes
• Dial 1 gives me some definition with a little length
• Other than the text printed on the bottle, no way to tell whether you are sitting on your selected dial or not.

Almay

• No smudging for over 10 hours
• Dial 3 gives me very clean relatively thick defined lashes
• Dial 1 clearly defines my lashes with a little length
• The bottle clicks each time you hit a particular dial so you know without looking at the bottle that you currently sitting on an actual dial.

MAC’s Haute and Naughty Lash had a similar concept, minus the dial feature. I think it’s really cool that the makeup industry is trying to find new ways to improve existing items such as mascara 🙂