This is number 2 of 4 in the Summer Bronzer Series where I post a bonus review every week in the month of July! Part 1 can be found HERE.

A few months ago, I was unfamiliar with Fara Homidi and her brand. However, their bronzers started to get incredibly popular due to the luxury makeup reviewers with fair and light skin raving so enthusiastically about the color Lumen and most especially the shade Bois.
I became more and more curious to see if anyone would go crazy over Roma and Ombra too. I waited for weeks and still couldn’t find a single review from someone with a tan or darker skin tone. So, I purchased the refill to try it for myself and see if the hype was justified.

Fara Homidi Essential Bronzer (refill) in Roma

Packaging/Refill

I was pleasantly surprised that this refill came in a thick plastic clamshell that mimics the real packaging in shape and color. The real compact is matte brown and made of “hand-polished lacquered metal,” but the refill packaging is shiny, as seen in the first photo of the post.

The outside of the refill is made of “42% cellulose-based plastic,” and underneath are the raised letters ‘FH’ that fits into the ‘FH’ on the bottom of the clamshell container. The bronzer is actually pressed inside a metal pan, but it has that brown colored plastic encasing it.
So, the compact and refill pans are magnetic, but the magnetic pull is not strong enough for the pan to adhere to a separate Z-palette on its own. I have heard that the Fara Homidi compacts are weighty, so I assume the strong magnet is what locks the pan in place while contributing to the packaging feeling heavy.

I am pleased enough with the plastic case to keep the refill in there, but for anyone intending to add a metal sticker to the bottom and put it in a standard empty magnetic palette, just know that the refill height is above the edge, as seen in the bottom right corner of the second photo above. My example is how it sits in a large Z-palette. I can still shut the lid, but I recommend that someone place it in a deeper type of custom palette specifically made to house large domed products to ensure the sides are high enough.

Choosing a Shade

Regarding the color, I thought Roma was unique in my collection until I compared it to the “glow” half of the Laura Mercier Color Infusion Bronzer in the shade Riviera. The base color is deeper and more red in Roma than Riviera, which is why I can actually use the shimmery side of Riviera as a highlighter, but I cannot do that with Roma. They look so similar in natural light, but at night under daylight lights that wash it out, the difference is far more obvious.

When I pick up the product without rubbing, it looks darker. Once it’s smoothed out, it looks lighter. I think that has to do with the ingredients used to make the Fara Homidi Bronzer look luminous (mica, boron nitride, or the combination of both), which also lightens the overall appearance. It’s why the bronzer looks different in the pan depending on how much light is shining on it. I cannot see any shimmer specks, but there is a beautiful sheen that is very much apparent when blended in.

I feel confident in my choice to pick Roma over Ombra, but I have to share the photos from the Niche-Beauty website to explain my point.

The scraped pictures shows the undertone of the bronzers the best, even though it will appear a little lighter on the skin. Ombra looks almost purple with how richly red it is. I’m sure it would look gorgeous on someone else, but when my skin burns it turns more like the color of Roma.
That being said, I’m still not sure if I’m in love with this color. It’s not the kind of red that I flat out dislike (such as the original Benefit Hoola Toasted bronzer), but my favorite bronzer colors are yellow/golden, golden-orange, or neutral-brown that appears deep pink rather than red. There was a time when I liked the sunburned look, so when that inevitably becomes favorable to me again, I think I will appreciate the tone of Roma a lot more. This is especially coming off the heels of disliking how red I became while in Florida three months ago.

I mentioned that at the time I made my purchase, there were no reviews of the darkest two shades. It takes me ages to test and complete my posts, so there are videos available on YouTube by now. I’ve seen people much lighter and much darker rocking Roma and being happy with their shade selection, so the limited range seems to stretch quite a bit at least. I’m still not completely satisfied, so if the brand extends the shade range and releases another deep option in a different undertone, I would be tempted to buy it.

Performance

The brand calls this bronzer a “soft suede,” which perfectly describes the softness level of the powder. It has a slightly clay-like feel from how smooth it is, but it’s far softer than even the Glowish Bronzer that comes first to my mind when I think about clay-like textured bronzers. The product picks up easily on my brush, and I get kickup, but I can apply such a thin even veil of color to my face. The healthy look that my skin has, after I’ve applied hydrating skincare that leaves me with a subtle glow that is fully dry to the touch, is the kind of lumi-matte finish that this bronzer bestows to my skin.

Even though the powder is so thin that it doesn’t look like I’m wearing any on my face, it’s still quite pigmented. Trying to find the right brush in the beginning was tricky because I knew that this bronzer should be capable of giving me an airbrush finish, but even my top five favorite bronzer brushes were too dense. I can blend this product out, but the bronzer looks more natural on my skin if I build it up instead. I went as far as to use this bronzer with my Hakuhodo 2025 Gradation Sakura Limited Edition Brush that is partly synthetic and most similar in shape that I have to the one sold by Fara Homidi, but I needed something even airier to make this particular shade look natural on me. The rephr kōyō brush turned out to be the winner! It makes this bronzer perform to its full potential! A good color match and the right brush is key. If these two conditions aren’t met, I don’t think this bronzer will be enjoyable to the purchaser.

Issues

This bronzer is long-wearing no matter if I put it on top of bare skin or a full face of makeup. One minor inconvenience is that it turns unnatural looking again if I use one of my glowy setting sprays on top of it because it intensifies the color, which draws attention back to the fact that it’s not the perfect undertone for me. Imagine my surprise when my bronzer looked blurred with a slight veil of reddish brown, only to turn into a higher saturated red after I sprayed my face!

This change in color happened with Charlotte Tilbury and Pat Mcgrath’s glowy sprays, plus MAC Fix+, but it only happened with the Huda Easy Bake Setting Spray when I held the bottle too close to my face. It’s a problem I can easily avoid by just not using a setting spray, but I do count this as a point against the bronzer. Some people will use sprays with this product, and perhaps it will be fine if the tone of red is flattering for them, but for others it could ruin the whole makeup look.
Also, when my face was a bit dewier, or when I put skincare and still-wet foundation on the back of my hand to test how it looks if I applied the bronzer on top of a wet base, the color didn’t change as much. So, it seems to be a problem with moisture hitting the top of it and not moisture from underneath, as if it removes the sheen to unveil the base color within.

This has a very creamy and moisturizing formula with the Squalane, Sodium Acetylated Hyaluronate, Snow Mushroom (Tremella Fuciformis Sporocarp Extract), Ethylhexylglycerin, and various oils. One thing that has me a bit confused is that Niche-Beauty also includes Kaolin Clay as a key ingredient, and there is a description about it in the “benefits” section. However, I don’t see kaolin clay or its various alternative names on the full ingredient list on my unicarton or the Niche-Beauty website, and kaolin is not mentioned on the Fara Homidi website. However, it’s there on the Sephora US website between the Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil and Triethoxycaprylylsilane.

Since the official website states, “Occasionally ingredient lists will change due to the availability of raw materials and as we optimize our formulas,” it makes me wonder if kaolin is actually in here and someone forgot to list it on the unicartons and every website, or if an earlier version of this product had kaolin, but what’s on the market currently does not.

It’s not unheard of for a hydrating formula to still have kaolin clay, zea mays, or some other dry ingredient to help balance things out. It doesn’t effect me whether that ingredient is in here or not, but I’m including this information since it could be important to someone else.

Another thing to note is that this contains Parfum and Vanillin. It has what I associate as a “beachy” smell in the tropical sense. It smells a bit like coconut and vanilla. I think it’s a pleasant scent and it’s not very strong, so I don’t mind it being in here.

Final Thoughts

I have a small twinge of regret in not buying the full compact because I like weighty makeup packaging. However, what I might do is wait for the brand to release blushes or some other product and see if the packaging for that one is even prettier.

Overall, I think it’s a very beautiful product and I don’t regret buying it. I understand the hype. This has the makings of being a perfect product for a select group of people, but it’s not going to be universally loved. As unique as the texture is, the performance and results are able to be matched by other bronzers. It’s not going to be an effortless blend for those that don’t have the right tools, and even if this had the best formula in the world, it doesn’t matter if it’s not the right color for the user. Then, of course, is the setting spray issue. For these reasons, I don’t feel that it’s amazing enough to be worth a casual makeup wearer saving up their money to buy it (unless the shade match is stellar). However, I think luxury makeup lovers and enthusiasts may see value in a bronzer like this. For some people, the packaging alone makes it covetable.

I feel it is too soon to rank this bronzer among my collection because I can’t make up my mind on how much weight to give the pros and cons. I have tried to be as fair as possible in this review, but I want to see how I feel several more months from now. I love the texture, I like the performance, but I need to see if my uncertainty about the color will lower my opinion of it over time.

*UPDATE AUGUST 4th, 2025 – I reevaluated my bronzer ranking list and this bronzer is currently sitting at 7 out of 49.

That’s all for today! If you like this kind of content, be sure to click follow to be notified the next time I post! Thank you for visiting!

-Lili ❤