Where to Find High End Hair and Beauty Products for Dirt Cheap
If you're like me, your love for high end beauty is constantly at war with your cheapskate tendencies. Believe it or not, the two can peacefully coexist! Through trial and error I've found ways to score high end makeup products at prices as low as drugstore products. With a little bit of patience, you can too!
T.J. Maxx & Marshalls
These are by far my favorite places to go for designer beauty on the cheap. I've seen all sorts of designer brands, including Benefit, Murad, H20, Ahava, Philosophy, Too Faced, DuWop, Urban Decay, CHI, Redken, TIGI and countless others! These products are often reduced by 50% or more and that's a price you just can't beat for designer hair and beauty. You can even score high end brush sets for $10-15. The holidays seem to be the best time to score your favorite makeup products and cosmetic brush sets from these stores because that's when the department stores are putting them out, but I've scored some fabulous finds year round.
Ebay & Amazon
Designer product buyers beware at these online giants, because for every truly designer product sold there seem to be at least five knockoff versions. Avoid this pitfall by only purchasing from sellers with high seller ratings and reviews. Also do a bit of research about what the packaging of your chosen product should look like. Still, these online stores are a fantastic way to find new, unopened beauty products for much cheaper than ticket price.
Makeup Swaps & Sales
Scour the net for reliable beauty bloggers hosting a sale of products they no longer want or need. Oftentimes these products will be new and still in their original packaging, and you can score them at deep discounts.
Nordstrom Rack
Each store has a mini makeup section chock full of designer hair and beauty products for a fraction of the price. I've seen boxed Urban Decay eyeshadow sets that still had their Sephora stickers. This is a great place to buy makeup sets and large bottles of shampo, often for half off or more.
Beauty.com
The online drug store is constantly offering sales and incentives on products you can find in Sephora and other big outlets. They seem to almost always have a 20% off sale going on, and promotions for first time buyers. The ticket price may not always be lower than other stores, but once you factor in all their discounts and often free shipping, this site is a great way to score high end products on the cheap.
Drugstores
With countless promotional programs like CVS ExtraBucks Rewards, Rite Aid +UP Rewards and Walgreens Balance Rewards, you can use points earned buying necessities to purchase high end hair products. They often offer mail-in rebates on designer products, so watch out for those as well.
Makeup Convention
Many are invitation only, but if you can score an invite you'll be introduced to a plethora of vendors selling very high end products often for much cheaper than their in-store price. A makeup convention is also a great place to score super hot makeup since the top makeup brands will have booths featuring their new make up and cosmetics lines.
Sally Beauty Supply
While Sally Beauty Supply doesn't always carry the designer brands I want, they do have an incredible Generic Value Product line that sells identical formulations for a fraction of the cost. My favorites include the GVP flat irons, Gold 'n Hot, and the GVP Redken Fabricate and Joico K-Pak knockoffs.
Many people don't realize that Sally Beauty Supply is more than just affordable hair care. They also offer many of the best makeup dupes including dupes for high end makeup.
Makeup Swaps
This is a relatively new phenomenon in the online beauty community. It originated with Youtube beauty gurus and online makeup forum members at beauty forums such as Makeup Alley. Two people agree to exchange slightly used or new high end makeup and beauty products in a makeup swap. Warning: This can be risky, so be sure to only engage in makeup swaps if you are over the age of 18 and fully trust the other person and can verify their offline identity if something goes wrong. After all, to participate in the makeup swap you will be sharing your address with this person, so you should know who they are.