Whilst I do love MAC brushes, not everyone can afford (or justify) to spend around $30-60AU on a single brush, and so I’ve tried branching out and experimenting with other brush brands to see if I can find others of similar or perhaps better quality. After months of use I thought it was high time I reviewed some of my Sigma brushes, known for being similar to MAC brushes at a fraction of the price.
I will get around to reviewing the other Sigma brush sets eventually, but today I thought I’d focus on the Synthetic Face Kit.
General Comment
- Incredibly dense, great for packing on product
- Can be very hard to keep clean
- Generally very high quality material
- Bristles are incredibly soft on the face, feels great!
The signature aspect of these brushes is that they are all incredibly dense, which means they are fantastic for packing on lots of product. The down side is that dense brushes tend to be worse at blending out product, they also aren’t as easy to clean as fluffier brushes since they hold so much left over product in the bristles. Overall I found the brushes to contain soft bristles, not many loose fibres during deep cleaning and are generally quite high quality brushes.
F82 – Round Top Kabuki
This brush ideally is used to apply liquid or powder foundations around the eyes and nose. Personally I found it too big to give even coverage under the eyes and around the nose, I had tried several times and had to resort of using my fingers to finish blending out my foundation.
I did however find this product great to applying products to the cheeks. I use this constantly for cream blushes and packing on lots of highlighter to my cheek bones for shoots.
This particular brush was the hardest to get clean, each time I have to deep clean it 2-3 times and then proceed to spend about 30 mins just scrubbing it with my standard brush cleanser. Not sure if it’s obvious in the photo, but it’s still not 100% clean 🙁
F80 – Flat Top Kabuki
This brush ideally is used to apply liquid, cream or powder products to the skin, and the flat top is meant for buffing out foundation for a flawless finish. Again, like the brush above I couldn’t use it for all that Sigma claims it can be used for.
The brush is far too big to be buffing out my liquid / cream foundations, it just can’t reach around every nook and cranny on my face, I need a much smaller brush or fingers to achieve that and I don’t personally think I have an abnormally small face so I’m pretty sure this would apply universally for others.
However this brush is perfect to patting on powder to the face once you have finished apply your normal foundation. I love it for setting my foundation, the flat top means it covers all larger areas around my face with ease. It’s also great at apply blush too! I use this almost all the time for powder application, and unlike the F82 brush, it is a lot easier to clean.
F84 – Angled Top Kabuki
Lastly, this brush claims to be perfect for applying liquid, cream and powder products to the cheeks and finally I personally feel this brush does live up to it’s claims. It suits my cheeks, though because of how dense it is I prefer only using it for cream blushes.
When it comes to powder blushes, I lean towards the traditional contour angled fluffier versions because I’m not trying to really pack on colour. Most of the time I just want a nice flush or hit of colour. But if you want strong blush pigmentation, I think this would do just fine.
Overall
These aren’t must have brushes, admittedly if I could do over I probably would only buy the F80 Flat Top Kabuki as I find myself reaching for this all the time and it is my favourite pick from the bunch.
They aren’t bad brushes by any stretch of the imagination though, very high quality with little bristle fall out during cleaning. If you’ve got the cash, go ahead and get the set, but if you really only want something you’ll use then stick with the F80 Flat Top Kabuki.
Individually these brushes go for $16US each, or you can purchase the entire set for $42US on the Sigma website. As an added bonus, Sigma are very good at packing their brushes up in cute bags upon delivery 🙂
Love these, but yes they are a total hassle to clean! lol
I’m a bit anal when it comes to cleaning brushes, I want them to appear exactly the way I first bought them! So this process can take forever sometimes @_@
I have to admit that it was a hassle in cleaning these brushes when I first received them. They had this huge glue smell and the drying for these brushes took almost 1 1/2 days for it to completely dry. Overall I enjoy using it, whenever I’m in a hurry and not being particular of the brushes that I use it does a pretty good job. Thanks for reviewing this.
For sure! If these weren’t so hard to clean they’d be perfect! Though they are probably so hard to clean cause of their density, which is something I love about them 🙂 Glad you love them too and thanks for reading 😀
Thanks for the review! I’ve been eyeing the F80 for a while now.
I might just order it!
Woo! I hope you love it as much as I do 🙂