Battle of the Black Eyeliners: What is the best pencil eyeliner?

Hey guys! Before we get into today’s post just wanted to say I reached 300 followers on my blog! Thank you to everyone who has followed me 🙂 Three hundred is a pretty big number and I’m excited to hit more milestones together. Okay, let’s talk about eyeliners.

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When I decluttered my makeup collection, I noticed that I had a bunch of black pencil liners. I don’t need five black liners so I thought I would test them out and keep my favourites. So let’s go over my methodology and then I’ll give you the results for each eyeliner. I applied the liner in three different ways: to my top lash line straight from the pencil, create a wing with a brush and straight to my top waterline. I added using a brush to create the wing because it’s more precise than using the pencil. I also didn’t put the liner in my bottom waterline to see how much the pencil transferred. I also wore each liner for a minimum of eight hours.

The qualities I’m looking for are easy application, little to no transfer to my lower waterline, dark colour, no fading or smudging and ease to remove. Also, I generally don’t use pencil liners on my eyelid I prefer using a liquid. But I decided to test it because ideally, I want to keep a liner that’s good all-round, not just in the waterline.

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The first liner is the Qveen Dragonliner Wax Pencil. I got this with a liquid liner in my Boxycharm. Unfortunately, it isn’t sold separately, so it’ll run you $27 US for both (but the liquid is pretty good). The pencil had a deep, rich, matte colour. It skipped a bit on the eyelid but was easy to use with a brush and in the waterline. This liner stay puts well. It was intact on both the eyelid and in the waterline. If I rubbed the tail it didn’t budge. It was also easy to remove. I was able to use a facial cleanser, didn’t need an oily remover to get rid of it.

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The second contender is the KVD Cake Pencil Eyeliner. This is available at Sephora and retails for $26 CAD. Just want to note I did get this in my Boxycharm. This formula is quite soft. So it’s easy to apply on the lid and in the waterline. I tried to rub my brush on the pencil directly but it was too soft and broke. It worked better when I applied the pencil to my hand and rubbed my brush on that. It transferred from my top waterline to my bottom waterline. Even though it transferred it was still intact on the top lash line. But it didn’t move on my lid. And it was quite difficult to remove, I had to use an oil-based remover.

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The third contender is the Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Waterproof Eyeliner Pencil. The specific shade I have is Oil Stick which has been discontinued (probably for the best because spoiler I didn’t like it). It retails for $30 CAD. This shade is more grey than black and it has glitter running through it. While it applied easily to both the lid and waterline, I could feel glitter particles on my eyeball which is not healthy. After eight hours it was grey and faded and rubbed off easily. There was also nothing left in the waterline. It did come off easily. Now I do want to note that I have this pencil in another colour and it works amazingly so it might just be this shade.

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The fourth contender is the Vintage by Jessica Liebeskind Smokey Eye Pencil. This pencil retails for $21 US, and I did get this in my Boxycharm. It was easy to apply both on the lid and with a brush, but the shade was more grey than deep black. It transferred almost immediately to the lower waterline when I applied it to the top waterline. After eight hours there was nothing in the waterline and the top looks very faded and was easy to rub off. It removes easily, probably because there was barely anything left.

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The final contender is another Urban Decay eyeliner, this time their 24/7 Waterline Eye Pencil. This liner is specifically designed for the waterline. This is surprising because it transferred almost immediately when I applied it to my top waterline. It was also difficult to apply on my eyelid and with a brush. By the end of the day it was smudged on my lower lash line, but the wing was pretty intact. It was easy to remove.

My overall winner is the QVEEN liner. It was a little difficult to apply on the eyelid but it excelled in every other category. I would say the runner-up is the KVD liner. While it did transfer to the lower waterline if I applied it to the lower lash line then I wouldn’t have that issue. I think the KVD liner would also be a good liner to use underneath eyeshadow for a smoky look since it didn’t budge. It’s also more accessible since it’s available at Sephora.

The Urban Decay Waterline and the Vintage eyeliner performed pretty poorly and I wouldn’t recommend them. I will be getting rid of those as well at the Urban Decay glitter eyeliner because I couldn’t stand those glitter particles in my eyes. But like I mentioned, I have other Urban Decay Glide-On liners that work well, so it could just be that shade – and that could be why it was discontinued.

I hope you guys found this post helpful. It was super fun for me to run my own little experiment and see what was the best. Let me know in the comments what your favourite black eyeliner is and maybe I’ll test it out!

xoxo

Lea