The battle of the bronzer: Fenty Beauty vs Charlotte Tilbury, which product is the best?

How will Rihanna's brand's coveted product fare against a new launch? We put both to the test

The latest Charlotte Tilbury bronzer, which launched last month, racked up a 5,000 person waiting list (The Inependent/iStock)

The humble bronzer is a staple in most make-up bags. With the ability to warm up your complexion with a flick of a brush, it’s a must-have for a healthy glow, particularly during the summer months when we tend to pare back our beauty routines and are in need of a quick fix.

Although it might seem like any old compact will do, perfecting a formula is no easy feat. A top performing bronzer will simultaneously warm up your complexion while contouring your cheekbones, jawline and nose, without appearing orange or ashy.

The best of the bunch will achieve all this without you having to put much effort into application, faultlessly buffing into the skin for a natural glow.

In case you can’t tell, we have high expectations of this seemingly simple product, so when Charlotte Tilbury – a coveted beauty brand headed up by a celebrity make-up artist – launched its latest bronzer last month, we had to try it.

Racking up a waiting list of 5,000 people, the product is inspired by the brand’s best selling airbrush face powder, a finely milled, pore-blurring, matte product rated by many.

But before Charlotte Tilbury announced its latest creation, another brand upped the ante when it came to bronzing. Fenty Beauty, renowned for its face products with industry-defining shade ranges, reigned top spot with its sun stalk’r instant warmth bronzer, which launched in early 2019. Rihanna designed the formula in a plethora of shades to “bring out the warmth in all skin tones, from the fairest to the deepest”.

We’ve put both products to the test, reviewing the shade range, formula, price point and ease of use, to find out which of these make-up moguls came out on top.

You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps us to fund journalism across The Independent.

Charlotte Tilbury airbrush bronzer, 16g: £39, Charlotte Tilbury

Before we review the product itself, we have to talk about the packaging. The oversized, vintage-style gold compact made us feel like Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby, and is a beautiful addition to anyone’s dresser. At a whopping 16g, this is far larger than standard compact sizes (which tend to be around 8g), so this is reflected in the price tag. As with all Charlotte Tilbury products, there are plenty of ingredients at work here.

If you’ve ever tried the brand’s airbrush powder, you’ll be familiar with the blurring, perfecting properties it has, which are featured again in this bronzer. From soft-focusing silica that reflects light for an airbrushed effect and micro-fine perfecting powders that add pigment while blurring the skin to hydrating hyaluronic acid, we had high expectations. It’s available in four shades: fair, medium, tan and deep, with plenty of swatches and diverse model shots on the website to help you find the right colour for you.

This applied beautifully to our skin, with plenty of pigment which meant we barely had to tap the pan to get enough product for a full bronze, and blended with minimal effort. We tested the medium shade which was warm without being orange and didn’t appear muddy on the skin, even when we built up the coverage.

The shade looked lighter in the pan than it did on our skin, which makes it more difficult to find your perfect shade. Some matte bronzers can make your complexion appear flat, but this lifted the look of our skin, hugging the contours of our cheeks, while leaving us with a healthy glow. Because this is highly pigmented, it is slightly harder to build on the skin, but you shouldn’t need to as the colour pay-off is so good the first time.

We used this both as a bronzer and contour across our cheeks, temples, and nose, and it delivered on its skin-blurring properties, giving extra coverage to the areas we applied it. Although the colour range claims to cater to all skin tones, the line is small with just four shades, and doesn’t accommodate for undertones like Fenty Beauty's product does. The compact is refillable, with refills launching later this summer at £28, making this a more conscious buy.

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Fenty Beauty sun stalk'r instant warmth bronzer, 6.23g: £25, Harvey Nichols

When Rihanna launched her make-up line in 2017, it made waves in an industry previously criticised for its lack of diversity in shade ranges. It launched with a foundation available in 40 shades (this has since expanded to 50), a release that truly catered to all skin tones, inspiring rival brands to do better. With two years in the making, the brand’s matte powder bronzer follows suit, available in eight different shades that not only cater to skin tones, but different undertones too.

This has been our favourite bronzer since it launched for one reason: the creamy formula blends like a dream while being completely buildable – it’s hard to go wrong. We tested “private island”, a light to medium shade with warm undertones, which delivered on our expectations both in the pan and on the skin.

Much like the Charlotte Tilbury formula, it works both as a contour and bronzer, enhancing the appearance of cheekbones while giving an all-over glow. It is slightly less pigmented, but applies effortlessly, which we prefer as this gives you more control over the coverage. No matter how much you build this, even if you top it up after a day’s worth of wear, it never looks cake-y.

It's warm without being ashy, a key factor to look out for in a bronzer. Another thing we cannot fault is the staying power of this product: the pigment stays true all day and wears beautifully on the skin. It also contains mango and papaya fruit extracts for extra skin-loving benefits. We’d recommend this to anyone, as it’s a versatile staple that accommodates every skin tone. Our only criticism of this bronzer is its weight. At 6.23g, it contains slightly less product than many bronzers, (Nars’ laguna and Benefit’s hoola bronzers are 8g, for reference) but the price point seems fair for the grams.

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The verdict: Charlotte Tilbury vs Fenty Beauty bronzer

It’s a close call, as each bronzer delivered on natural colour, buildability and ease of blending, and we’d recommend them both as worthy additions to your collection. But Fenty Beauty’s takes the top spot for its comprehensive shade range that considers undertones as well as skin tones, while being completely foolproof in how easy it is to buff into the skin. We have yet to find a bronzer that builds so naturally.

The Charlotte Tilbury formula was only just pipped to the post, and we love the detailed compact and refillable concept that would encourage us to buy again. For the amount of product you get, we think this is one of the brand’s more reasonably priced products. We were also impressed with the ingredients that helped to give that our-skin-but-better effect, notably hyaluronic acid, which the brand’s founder believes is a first for a powder product. If Charlotte Tilbury were to expand its shade range, it’d be an even closer match.