Revlon ColorStay Moisture Stain Review

Hello friends! I was rooting through a bargain beauty bin, and came across these Revlon Colorstay Moisture Stain lip products, on sale for only $2.50 each. I spent about 20 minutes rummaging through the bins, looking for as many shades as I could. I ended up finding six, which I figured is enough for me to put together a review. 

There were many different kinds of lip products in the bargain bin, what what stood out to me about these were their sleek shape, and bright colors.

The Revlon ColorStay Moisture Stains are supposed to drench your lips in glossy, wet color without any stickiness. It is, as the name suggests, supposed to be a moisturizing stain.

The wands are quite short, but fit in my hand nicely. It has a doetip applicator, with a hollowed out center that holds quite a bit of product. I really love the design and functionality of the packaging.

 

Here are swatches for each of the shades. From top to bottom: India Intrigue, LA Exclusive, Barcelona Nights, Rio Rush, Cannes Crush, and Miami Fever. I had high hopes for the lip stains based on the swatches. They were glossy, and were high pigment.

However, some of the stains did not hold up on the lips. I’m going to split my lip swatches into two categories: good and bad.

The Good Shades

The good shades had a thin consistency, and were opaque in one coat. They were a little finicky to apply, but I learned that dabbing rather than swiping worked best. They looked beautiful on my lips, and the color stayed for about an hour. However, these are NOT stains. They transfer very easily, and they leave no color behind. I tried on six of these in one day, and at the end of the day my lips had zero pigment left behind from any of these so-called “stains”. In my opinion, these are just high-pigment lip glosses. All right, let’s look at the shades that looked nice:

India Intrigue (001)

Barcelona Nights (015)

Cannes Crush (025)

 

The Absolutely God-Awful Shades

One of these shades, Miami Fever, takes the prize for the worst lip product I’ve ever tried. Nope, I’m not exaggerating. The formula of these stains were drastically different from the last three shades. They were congealed, goopy, and felt disgusting on the lips. Plus, no matter how I applied, I got super patchy coverage. The formula just slid all over my lips. I worked with the first shade (Rio Rush) for about 10 minutes, and I finally got it looking presentable. However, if you look closely, you can see that it is actually curdled on my bottom lip. The second shade, LA Exclusive, would NOT stay on my top lip. And the final shade, Miami Fever… well, you’ll know what’s wrong with it when you see the picture.

Rio Rush (020)

LA Exclusive (010)

Miami Fever (035)

After testing the lipsticks, I did a bit of digging around online. Revlon no longer sells this product, but you can find it on sale for 50% off at Walmart, Walgreens, and Amazon. This leads me to believe that the product is leftover from a couple years ago, and is nearing its expiration date. That would explain the congealing texture of some of the shades. They also had quite a bad taste as well. This product may have been amazing when Revlon first released it but it is now quite disappointing. If you come across this on sale at your favorite beauty store, DO NOT buy it. It’s rubbish now, and even at a bargain price is still a waste of money.