W7 Shade & Swap Review

W7 Shade & Swap

Cleaning brushes? Uck. It’s the one task in my beauty routine I despise doing and just can’t bring myself to do regularly anything that successfully prolongs the need to take a 40 minute brush washing sit down gets a thumbs up from me. And this beautiful little gem – W7 Shade & Swap – gets an even bigger thumbs up, because you can reuse that brush that’s just been covered in neon pink shadow straight away.

I’ve had my eye on getting one of these contraptions for a while – there was the original version of it on the Beauty Bay (which they no longer stock), and when I went into my local outlet 3 weeks ago I spotted a dupe of it from W7 called Shade & Swatch, I skipped to the till and threw my money at them as so far my experience of W7 Dupes has been great, and this little pot came in at just £3.99.

w7-shade-and-swap-brush-cleaner

The packaging of this isn’t as nice as others that I’ve seen, others have come in chicer metal tins, however this packaging is nice and lightweight and wouldn’t be the worst thing to pop in your makeup bag to take away with  you. Inside the product is simple a black, slightly coarse dry sponge.

The concept is simple, wipe your brush back and forth, swirl it around and it will remove the product from your brush. In theory this works with every powder, however the surface area of the sponge isn’t that large which means that fluffier brushes suck as powder or blush brushes mean it’s not so easy to clean off these and I’ve preferred it just for eye shadow. I’ve also found this works best at cleaning brushes if you start with one which has only been used once or twice, once the colour has become really worked into the bristles and caked in the same colour this doesn’t clean the brush perfectly. But I’ve found if I go over each brush after I’ve used it I can keep all of them relatively clean.

w7-shade-and-swap-before
Brush before
w7-shade-and-swap-during
Swirl Your Brush Around
w7-shade-and-swap-after
After

The W7 Shade & Swap gets a massive two big thumbs up from me. I was a little concerned as to what would happen to this sponge when it became too dirty, would it be unwashable – is it just a one roll of the dice type thing? Well not only does this pull out meaning you can use the brush on both sides, but it washes product out really easily without needing anything adding to it. Because the type of sponge is so porous it dries out pretty quickly too meaning you can just get back to blending easily.

Being deadly serious, this is probably one of the best purchases I’ve made this year. Not sure how I’ve lived without one for so long! Do you have one of these colour swapper sponges?

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Helpless Whilst Drying

Email: helplesswhilstdrying@gmail.com

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37 Comments

  1. byebeautyblog
    November 8, 2016 / 6:43 am

    This product sounds amazing. Think I might have to get one. I too hate washing my brushed and put it off more often than not! Thank you for the recommendation πŸ™‚

      • byebeautyblog
        November 8, 2016 / 11:07 am

        It’s in my Amazon basket as we speak πŸ™‚ this is a perfect lazy girl hack

      • Jade Norman
        February 6, 2019 / 1:20 pm

        I bought mine today and came across ur blog to make sure it was meant to be a dry sponge! I thought mine had dried out. Cant believe a little dry sponge works so well!

  2. WineAndWhine
    November 8, 2016 / 8:16 am

    Woah i have never seen an invention like this, i hate cleaning my brushes, what a great idea! X

  3. November 8, 2016 / 8:41 am

    I don’t think I’ve even seen or heard of these before but they seem like a marvelous idea! This would come in handy for going away if you need to clean brushes quickly without the hassle x

  4. November 8, 2016 / 8:50 am

    Being a cheapskate I get one of those softer porous plastic scrubbers from the dollar store and they do work quite well… πŸ˜› πŸ˜› πŸ˜›

  5. November 8, 2016 / 12:21 pm

    I definitely need this!

  6. November 8, 2016 / 3:19 pm

    I remember when these brush cleaning sponges were all the rage. The original one (Color Switch) was SO expensive ($25) that people were duping them with common sponges. I don’t think the dupes were as good. But if I ever come across the W7 version, I’ll be sure to pick it up!!! Right now I use a nubby art brush cleaner to clean my brushes, which I posted about a while back:
    https://stashmatters.com/2015/03/23/spring-cleaning-how-i-wash-my-brushes/
    It works well to loosen the embedded powders, but I imagine a sponge like this would be even more thorough!

    • November 8, 2016 / 3:53 pm

      Yes I think the colour switch one was about Β£15 on the Beauty Bay, I’m glad I never bothered and got this one instead! They’re a perfect tool for a quick freshen up of your brushes – definitely keep your eye out for the w7 version, handy to take for travel too – although you pack so light you probably wouldn’t haha!

  7. November 8, 2016 / 4:23 pm

    This is really interesting, I have to give it a go! xx

  8. November 8, 2016 / 4:41 pm

    I ordered the shadow switch on amazon so I can’t wait for it to arrive. I use the same brushes for various eyeshadow colours when I do my makeup, so this will be handy to clean them up quick☺ x

    • November 8, 2016 / 4:46 pm

      Yeah I was planning on ordering some duplicates of my favourite brushes as I would like to use them multiple times in the same look and can’t! this is the perfect tool and I don’t have to buy loads more brushes! x

      • November 8, 2016 / 4:48 pm

        I agree. Some brushes are great for applying various colours to the eye, so this means we can use these brushes and just clean them☺ x

          • November 8, 2016 / 5:13 pm

            Exactly. I can’t wait until mine arrives! X

  9. November 8, 2016 / 4:55 pm

    I’ve been wanting to get a product like that but I can’t find any affordable ones here. It’s crazy because I saw W7 at my local drugstore last year but it was only a handful of products, I haven’t seen that brand anywhere else since then. I’ll have to do my research lol.

  10. Whenpassionmeetslove
    November 14, 2016 / 6:19 am

    Yes girl it’s the best thing in the world OMG , I’m addicted to mine, it’s ridiculous πŸ˜‚. My only issue is that I don’t know how we clean it πŸ˜‚

  11. April 6, 2017 / 3:47 pm

    Hey, you take great photos what camera are you using? Thanks for the review by the way. Looks like I’m going to have to invest!

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