Review: MAC 216 Brush

The MAC 216 brush is long discontinued. I bought mine several years ago from eBay, in the time when MAC found on eBay was really MAC and not some weird fake stuff. It still pops up from time to time, usually under about £7.00. I have decided to include this brush in my reviews as I will eventually be reviewing every single brush in my collection. I can't say that I'd recommend buying MAC from eBay, even fake brushes turn up on a daily basis. Buyer beware and all that.

MAC use a numbering system for their brushes, like a few of the higher end companies do. Those with fewer brushes tend to use names, but MAC have a lot of brushes! The 100 series is for the face, 200 for the eyes and 300 for the lips.


The MAC 216 brush is a very soft animal hair brush with quite long, floppy bristles. I believe this brush was described by MAC as either a "fluff brush" or "blending brush".

This isn't the most useful brush that MAC has ever put out, I don't use this one every time I apply make up. But it can be quite useful. I tend to use this to apply my brow bone highlight as the very soft bristles don't tend to apply too much colour. It will also blend the highlight into the crease but doesn't really do it as well as the MAC 224 or my Eye Base Brush from Mineral Fusion. The softness of the brush prevents it from being a really fantastic blending brush.

It's too soft for me to use to apply my lid colour, even if I wanted nothing but a sheer wash of colour. I did try to use it for that, but absolutely nothing showed up: it's just too soft! Also, I had no luck trying it as a crease brush. It was the wrong shape to apply colour in my crease but it would blend a soft crease. None of your smokey looks here, it won't move that much eye shadow! Keep it for softer, more natural looks.

Really not an essential brush, if you have the 224 it'll do pretty much the same job (but apply a more strongly coloured crease) and it'll blend into the crease colour much more smoothly.