This Year’s Best Mascara Is Only $8

For our 24th annual Best Beauty Buys, we surveyed leading dermatologists, makeup artists, hairstylists, and manicurists to find out which products they can't get enough of. The votes are in: You'll want to clear a shelf for these 154 beauty game-changers.

Mascara, like pizza, is one of the few things in life that doesn't have to be expensive in order to be good. Yep, it's true: There are drugstore mascaras out there that are just as good (if not better) than designer brands.

Need proof? When we tasked this year's Best Beauty Buys panel to find the best mascara out there, their pick was an $8 drugstore staple.

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L'Oréal Voluminous Original Volume Building Mascara won the bragging rights for 2019 because of its uncanny ability to make lashes appear five times their natural thickness. No, that's not a typo.

A few coats of the clump-free formula adds fullness so that it looks like you have more lashes than you actually do. On top of the smooth application, this mascara doesn't flake and irritate sensitive eyes or contact wearers. It comes in black, blackest black, brown, and blue, plus a waterproof version (which, by the way, also won a BBB award this year).

Even with the waterproof formula, which will stay smudge-free when watching an emotional episode of Queer Eye, the mascara easily washes off without having to rub the hell out of your eyes.

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As for the brush, it's fluffy and designed to hug each lash for maximum volume. To get the best results, the brand recommends placing the wand at the base of your lashes and sweeping it up to the tip.

To sum it up: Great lashes don't have to cost a lot of coin. Basically, grabbing a tube of this L'Oréal's mascara on your next drugstore run is just as much of a no-brainer as grabbing a bag of Haribo Gold-Bears.