We Tested 7,660 Products for This Year’s Best of Beauty Awards

Choosing the winners of Allure‘s Best of Beauty Awards takes months of preparation and testing, crates of makeup remover, and 71 meticulously maintained Google Sheets — plus a staff of beauty lovers who don’t mind wearing a 10-shade manicure or enlisting their dads and kids to help test the mountains of face masks, conditioners, and more brands who are hoping to win an award send our way.

And that’s just the start. 7,660 products were tested in all before we found our winners: We eagerly smoothed on serums, sniffed perfumes, even test-drove liquid lipstick as eye shadow (OK, that one was an accident) until we had our winners.

345 awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping (and sometimes jaw-firming) products ultimately won Allure‘s Best of Beauty Awards this year, the culmination of five months of careful testing and dozens of hours of friendly debate.

There’s something for everyone in our winners list — and something at almost every price point. $1.55 is the cost of the least-expensive winner, AOA Studio Paw Paw Wonder Blender, a reusable makeup sponge that works minor miracles in the blending department. $600 is the steepest price tag you’ll find among our winners this year, for a 30-milliliter tube of brightening peptide serum from RéVive.

612 tools, creams, dry shampoos, and more (way more) were submitted for our Breakthroughs category. Sixteen judges, 35 interviews, and mountains of lab data later, we named the seven most innovative products of the year.

And here are some of the more memorable moments we had along the way:

“I got a LOT of comments, mostly from people trying to be nice, like, ‘Oh, what an interesting manicure,'” says deputy digital director Kara McGrath. “After I explained what was going on, they were very relieved.”