This Is the Best Contour Stick for People Who Can’t Contour

If there’s one thing I can pride myself on, it’s the fact that I have known exactly who I am since I was about five years old. I also have a great sense of exactly what I’m good at (gift giving, daydreaming, rattling off Sex and the City lines by heart) and what I am not. And what I’m not good at is contouring.

I’ve tried a million times to nail the technique. I fantasize about using an earth-toned powder or cream to carve my round baby face into the sculpted cheekbones of my dreams, but it always ends up looking like either nothing at all or a streak of paint down my face. That is until I heard about the Uoma Beauty Double Take Contour stick.

I had pretty much abandoned my attempts at contouring and was exclusively draping with blush, when I started hearing about Uoma’s stick everywhere. Most notably, Caroline Goldfarb, cohost of the podcast Glowing Up, and Charlotte Palermino, Dieux Skin cofounder and overall beauty genius, both gave it rave reviews. The brand’s founder Sharon Chuter has also been leading the charge to better diversify the beauty industry.

The Uoma Beauty Double Take Contour Stick has a creamy contour shade on one end and a pretty shimmering highlighter on the other. It comes in six different shades, which is really generous for contour products. According to the brand, it’s a “contact-melting formula” with buildable long-wear and a soft, matte finish. It describes the highlighter side as having “the glow of a thousand suns,” which yes, please.

One of my major problems with contour products is they usually run too warm on me—if I wanted to wear bronzer, I would just wear bronzer. But I’m happy to report that the White Pearl shade (the lightest shade) is nice and cool, without looking gray or corpselike. The highlighter is a lovely Champagne pink with zero sparkle, just a pretty glow.

My favorite thing about this product, though, is that it checks all the boxes I’ve never been able to check with a contour before. It shows up enough to subtly sculpt my cheeks, but still looks natural (no 2016 Instagram-y tiger stripes here). It’s super buildable, which is great if you prefer something a little more dramatic, and the highlighter gives me a pretty, lit-from-within glow.

I’ve found it’s a little too much product for me right from the stick, so I use my finger to dab a few dots right above my cheekbones (a clever face-lift hack I learned on TikTok) before blending out with a brush.

Bella Cacciatore

It might not turn me into Bella Hadid, but it has restored my faith in the power of a good contour.