Under Eye Brightening Solutions: Laura Mercier's Secret Brightening Powder and Ben Nye's Banana Visage Powder

These two products have been raved about around the beauty blogosphere as under eye brightening miracles. Here's how I weigh in:

Ben Nye (Banana) Visage Powder
"Ultra fine, sheer translucent, perfect soft finish"

Heralded as the best highlighting powder, it stands up to the claim! It's a light weight powder that sets concealer and brightens the under eye area without the cakiness. The powder comes in a small range of colors, but will be able to fit most for the purpose of highlighting.

My take: Since I prefer highlighting under my eyes as opposed to just concealing my dark circles, this powder has the pigmentation to give a brighter look as well as be translucent enough to not over do the job by being a second foundation; no cakiness. The pigmentation is key here as it will set the concealer and highlight (helps with oilies too!). So glad I have this in my kit. Ben Nye is my choice of setting powders for clients. While this is a good powder, I actually take any powder (decently milled) that's a bit lighter than my regular setting powder and use a fluffy brush to apply as it will soften the application.

Laura Mercier's Secret Brightening Powder
Laura Mercier's Secret Brightening Powder is a lighter-than-air powder used to set Secret Brightener, Secret Concealer and Secret Camouflage, while adding an invisible lightening boost.
LM's powder is lighter than air and will completely set concealer, not necessarily LM's trio of coverage in my case, but concealer nonetheless. This powder comes in two colors- #1 a white powder with silver sparkle and #2 an ivory powder with golden sparkles

My take: This brightens as one of the infamous HD, white translucent powders would brighten. That's not particularly the way I would like to brighten. The color comes off a bit off white with little to no detection of the sparkles. I would have to use this uber sparingly to not get the white cast. Unfortunately, I prefer a highlighter, so this isn't my cup of tea exactly. A little goes a long way, so I have more than enough to use up!

How do you weigh in? Have you tried these products? Prefer one over the other as I do? Let me know!