How to Highlight : Benefit Moon Beam vs Benefit High Beam – Glam Radar

Hi girls! Here is my review  on  Benefit Moon Beam vs Benefit High Beam and guide on how to highlight with benefit beam !

It’s Benefit week here at the blog! I’m talking about a few of their products that I love, including their new b.right skincare range – check back in a few days to see my review if you’re interested.

Today however, I’m kicking off by showing you two of Benefit’s different-but-similar highlighting products. The first is Benefit Moon Beam, and the second is Benefit High Beam. I’ll also tell you how to use them to highlight your face perfectly.

Before I talk about the products themselves, I waned to share some Highlighter Tips and Tricks: Using a highlighter like is fairly easy but you do need to know your face. As a general rule, it has to go on the places where the light hits your features:

  1. Along the high points of your cheekbones, but not the apples of your cheeks.
  2. The centre of your nose, but not along the sides.
  3. Your cupid’s bow – the centre of your top lip, but only a small dot/line in the middle. Don’t apply it along the whole top of your lip.
  4. Your browbone – right underneath your eyebrow arch.

You can also apply it along the centre of your forehead, but I don’t.

Of course, those are The Rules. Some of them, anyway. I don’t always follow them and I would encourage you to experiment with your own face and work out where highlighter looks best on you.

You can also use highlighters in combination with bronzers, powders or darker foundation shades to effectively contour your face. That’s for another post but if you’re curious, it’s worth picking up Kevyn Aucoin’s Making Faces as he has a brilliant face chart that will help.

One last tip: With Benefit Moon Beam and High Beam, you can also mix them with your foundation for a luminous all-over glow.

The first thing you’ll notice about Moon Beam and High Beam is that the packaging is quite unique. People think they’re nail polishes at first because there is a brush attached.

If you haven’t heard of these wonderful lovelies though, let me enlighten you…

Benefit Moon Beam is a golden apricot liquid that illuminates and adds a warm shimmer to the complexion. Benefit High Beam is a pearly pink which adds a cooler, silver-toned shimmer.

I’ve got some swatches for you.

As you can see, the formula when first applied can be quite thick, but it blends down into a really light shimmer. You also have to be careful about being heavy handed – a little goes a long way.

The real colour differences between the two become apparent when swatched at first too. Moon Beam is golden pink, while High Beam is silver pink.

When you actually blend them down and into the skin, there’s very little difference and the picture above probably doesn’t show the colour difference properly because of the way the light has hit my hand.

High Beam is a cooler highlighter, and Moon Beam is a warmer, more golden shade.

If trying to decide between the two, you need to consider your own skintone. I find I wear different shades in different seasons too – Moon Beam during the winter, and High Beam during the summer, although actually I do the reverse sometimes too. In winter I sometimes want to look more sunkissed, so I’ll wear Moon Beam.

I also find High Beam is a much stronger highlighter because it is so white and silvery, and Moon Beam is more subtle.

High beam on face swatch :

Moon beam swatch : As you can see Moon Beam is more sheer in colour than High Beam

So… cost? Australia: $45 UK: £18.50

US: $24

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