Urban Decay Naked Palette 2 Breakdown and Comparison

The saga continues- UD2! I had been waiting forever for Urban Decay to come out with a second Naked Palette because I loved my first one so much. I was anxious to see if they could come up with twelve more amazing shades that would prove to be just as easy to use, gorgeous, and well-loved as those in the original.

Here's part of the claim- The most anticipated sequel of the decade. Naked2 has 12 pigment-rich, taupe and greige neutral eyeshadows, including FIVE NEW shades. Our palette proves once again, neutral is anything but boring, (and is downright sexy when worn Naked). Feast your eyes on our shades ranging from pale to deep, matte to sparkly. This collection lets you achieve lots of neutral looks, smoky dramatic eyes, and everything in between. Let's just say there's a whole new way to get Naked!

When the palette first debuted, I was really disappointed. I didn't like many of the colors at all. A lot of them looked the same as in the first palette, and only a couple shades stood out to me. Some of the shades I downright disliked. But after seeing it in stores, as well as seeing more in-depth reviews of the palette and tutorials using it, it started to grow on me. In person, it doesn't look as similar to the original Urban Decay palette as you might have previously thought. The colors that do look similar I will list down below after the pictures, so you know which ones are pretty close.

I wouldn't say any of them are Dupes EXCEPT Half Baked which they put in both palettes!

I have no idea why they did that. That alone already automatically makes it go down from an A to a B for me, that's ridiculous. Instead of putting in a new gorgeous color they put it a color that is, admittedly one of my favorites, but at the same time, why repeat a color if you're doing a followup to the first one? That's just repeating, and that looks really cheap to me, as though the brand couldn't care/be bothered enough to think up another shadow.

Anyway, I really loved getting the UD Naked 2 Palette as a gift because it is just so beautiful. The packaging is absolutely gorgeous and sleek. It will also stay sleek because of the hard tin casing that does not attract fingerprints or anything of the like, unlike the original Naked Palette which comes packaged in a beautiful chocolate brown velvet casing, but unfortunately gets pretty worn looking after a while.

I have to admit that I do not use all of the colors in the palette. That is to say that there are some I just practically never reach for. The color Chopper for instance is just way too peachy/orangey for my taste.

It's pretty in the pan, but on the lid it just looks so bad to me, even though swatched, it is a beautiful color, and applies well. For my taste though, as I said, it's not something I myself would choose. I tried applying it on my friend because I thought maybe it could look like Expensive Pink from MAC but it doesn't... it just looked kind of warm and orange. That doesn't mean I won't use it, I definitely will, but just not as often as the others, and when I do apply it, it will serve as more of an accent or an inner lid color as opposed to something I would sweep all around my lid. I also have a bit of a problem with the color Tease.

My feeling is that it's supposed to work as a crease transition color, similarly to the light brown blending color Naked in the original Naked Palette, or even Buck which is darker, but good for blending out dark colors while adding a touch of brown. Tease is kind of this medium-toned odd lilacy/gray shade. I assume it is meant to be the main blending color in the palette, because 1) it's a neutral mid-tone shade 2) it's matte and blending colors are typically matte and 3) that's how I've seen it used in virtually every tutorial I watch. My problem is that I don't feel like it's neutral enough. To me it's obviously a weird dusty purple shade, and it just doesn't translate. I really would prefer something a bit closer to my skin tone, or at the very least, more flattering. I do use the shade but I prefer the options we had in the original more.

So how does it compare to the original Naked Palette? I pretty much love every single color in the Naked Palette. I really do. The only colors I don't use as much are Toasted and Hustle, but that's because I gravitate towards golds and bronzes. Those two are extremely pretty colors though, and I do still love them, and use them. I feel that the Naked Palette works for work, for nights out, for pinup looks, for basically anything you might want. You can create a gunmetal gray eye, a smokey bronzey eye, or a neutral cut crease with the two matte shades. The lighter shades, like Half Baked and Sidecar are really beautiful for just sweeping across the lid for an easy polished glowy look.

With the Naked 2 Palette, I think emilynoel83 said it best when she expressed her feeling that with the Naked 2 Palette, you don't get as many smokey, or dark colors, which I would have to agree with. There are many more light and medium-toned shades as opposed to dark shades in the Naked 2 Palette. At the same time, many of these shades are absolutely gorgeous, so you're not necessarily losing out. If I could change anything about the Naked 2 Palette, it would be to replace a few of the more useless colors (Half Baked, Chopper, and maybe Tease) and pop in some really pretty shades, like a gorgeous shimmery olive green which would look amazing paired with a brown, and maybe a dark shade of a really wearable, easy to throw on color. I just think they could have made this amazing instead of just good. I really like the palette, and I would never give it up but I do feel that the original Naked Palette had more to offer.

Some of the complaints about the original Naked Palette are that the colors are too warm. I don't think that's true, I don't particularly like warm warm colors, but I felt the colors in the original palette struck a perfect balance. Darkhorse for instance, was the perfect dark cool brown to complement Smog, which was a warm brown. Either way, people were saying that they wanted an option with more cooler-toned colors, and everyone is now raving about how the Naked 2 Palette delivers that for them. I disagree with this. I think the second half of the 12 shades is fairly cool-toned, but Chopper for instance is extremely warm-toned and reddy, and Suspect is warm as well, not to mention Half-Baked. Foxy is a really yellowy-cream shade, and overall I don't think the palette necessarily reads cool. So that's my take on the whole thing. I don't think their intention was to make a cooler palette, because their emphasis was on taupes and greiges, as they put it. So in terms of the warm vs. cool debate/preference, I don't think there's that much of a difference, if anything Chopper alone is warmer then any color in the original Naked Palette.

Finally, price. The Naked 2 Palette retails for $50, same as the original one, although when I got the original it came with a double ended eyeliner as opposed to a full brush and was $2 cheaper, at $48, although now it is priced at $50 and comes with a 1-sided brush. The Naked 2 Palette comes with a dual sided brush with one side being a flat brush to pack on color and the other being a longer dense tapered brush. It also comes with a mini lip junkie. I really like the brush the Palette comes with, it's a pretty sweet deal. I do wish the fluffy side was a bit shorter and a bit fluffier so it would work better as a blending brush, but I like it all the same, especially the design of it. Overall the packaging and design is very aesthetically pleasing, and the mini lip junkie it comes with (in Naked) is a cute add-on and pretty on the lips. I don't particularly like the minty coolness of it, because that's not a sensation I enjoy feeling on my lips. It feels a bit like a lip plumper. But in general, it is pretty.

So now I'll show you comparisons of the 2 palettes and swatches of each. You can judge for yourself how similar the 2 are. Additionally, I'll write my thoughts below on my favorite and least favorite colors from each palette, and any close colors I feel exist between the 2.

Naked 2 on top of Naked

Naked 2 vs. Naked. Naked 2 is the first pictured. They look similar, right?

Swatches:

 Naked, Naked 2

My faves:

Naked: Virgin, Naked, Sidecar, Half Baked, Smog, Darkhorse

Naked 2: Foxy, Suspect, Snakebite, Pistol, Verve, Busted

Urban Decay 24/7 Eyeliners in Zero and Bourbon, which came in the Naked Palette. Urban Decay Lip Junkie in Naked, which came in the Naked 2 Palette.

To tell the truth, when I opened my Naked Palette to try and pick Favorites, I wanted to take a picture of all 12 colors, but I didn't want to be an ass so I didn't. But I really do love the whole palette that much. For the 2nd palette I pretty much knew right away. So those are my favorites. I'll list my least favorites instead of swatching them, because all the swatches are pretty beautiful and I would look crazy if I had a bunch of gorgeous swatches and called them undesirable.

Least faves: Tease, Chopper. Foxy kind of makes the list because it's extremely hard to get pigmentation from and is a bit hard to work with. Half Baked I love but it is worth considering that it is in both the palettes, which sucks.

Interesting Notes: Busted to me is REALLY interesting because it looks similar to Hustle, and looks like a plummy dark purple but it translates to more of a chocolate brown which I love. Hustle itself is also interesting, because to me it's obviously a plum purple, and some people on YouTube call it purple, but some people will call it brown, and that's just crazy in my opinion! I don't know how it reads so many ways, but that's something interesting to note. In terms of order, I really like the way the Naked Palette is laid out. All the colors kind of flow as your eye goes down the line. However with Naked 2, I feel like it would have made sense for them to group the shadows differently. If they put the gold next to the brown, and the two lights together and so on and so forth, with Tease somewhere in the middle I felt it would have made more sense. Lastly, I've tried figuring out which color from the palette is supposed to represent the case color (which is so pretty. I constantly find myself staring at the gray-y, taupey, warm browny-ness of it), and I've come to the only conclusion that it must be Suspect. That's what it looks most similar to. It resembles Pistol a tiny bit too, maybe the 2 mixed together, but I feel like Suspect is the closest color to the case :) Just letting you know!

Dupes: I feel that Toasted and YDK are somewhat similar (YDK looks a bit like a mix between Sidecar and Toasted), and Hustle and Busted LOOK similar but aren't. Half Baked obviously, and Snakebite looks like a mix between Darkhorse and Smog. Other then that there actually aren't too many dupes :) Obviously there's a black in each palette- 1 is shimmery and 1 is matte. I prefer the shimmery one, Creep, which interestingly enough also gets called a charcoal gray color sometimes instead of black, which is what I consider it to be.

Hope this helped!

Look I did using the palette:
Hustle all over lid, Blackout in Outer V, YDK in inner corner- got this combo from Julieg713 :) Could have used a bit more blending of the YDK and the Hustle together, but overall I like it.

Don't mind the clothing changes :) I always take pictures in my pjs first and then change haha