Now what I personally look for in a liner is that is wears well, I want it to stay all day. I hate coming home at night and realizing that all of my makeup has come off. I also look at pigmentation, how opaque the colours are and how black the black colours are if you catch my drift. I also want the liners to be creamy, I don't want to tug at my eyeballs to get them to apply evenly, but at the same time I want them to set once they are applied, who wants to come home looking like a raccoon? Not this lady!
Lets look at the nude liners first. The packaging is pretty much the same. The Rimmel is smaller only because I have used it a lot. Both appear to be peachy skin tone nude shades.
When you swatch them you can see an apparent colour difference. The Maybelline is clearly lighter and more of a pink peach nude while the Rimmel is a darker peach nude. When I applied them to my arm the Rimmel is much much creamier, almost as creamy as a stick concealer. The Maybelline is much less blendable and is more like a typical pencil, it does glide on without tugging but I would not call it creamy. I think the Maybelline would work well for fair skin tones while the Rimmel works best for medium to dark skin tones. On myself I think the Rimmel looks more natural.
Rimmel Left, Maybelline Right |
Now looking at the black liners. I did make one huge mistake... I realized when I got home that I purchased the Rimmel in 002 sparkling black instead of 001 black... oops! I don't particularly like sparkly liners... Oh well lets take a look anyway.
I can't really judge the colour swatches because the Rimmel isn't actually black but I wanted to show you anyway. So the one with all the sparkles is the Rimmel.
So this is what I figured out after playing with the black liners. I like them each for different purposes. The Rimmel is great for the waterline as I said, creamy, pigmented, and waterproof. However, for my upper lash line I prefer the Maybelline. The reason is that the Rimmel is too creamy for me on the lid. I normally will put my black liner on and smudge and buff it out with a pencil brush and some shadow. The Rimmel kind of turns into a hot mess when I do it and doesn't really buff out and look airbrushed, it just kinda smears around all over. The Maybelline is great for blending and buffing out with powder. With the powder on top it lasts a long time.
Both brands are good for different things! If you are buying a pencil for the waterline I would recommend the Rimmel, for the lid I would go with the Maybelline! Hope this was helpful. If you know of any other great drugstore Kohls leave it in the comments below!