My Honest Thirteen Lune Review

I had heard of Thirteen Lune mostly because of the company’s focus on beauty brands founded by Black and Brown entrepreneurs, but I had never spent much time looking through the store itself. Once I did, I realized I had been thinking of it as much more niche than it actually is.

Thirteen Lune launched in 2020 and originally started with 13 brands. Co-founder Nyakio Grieco had already spent years in the beauty industry, and the company was built around giving more visibility to founders who had been overlooked by traditional retailers. The site has expanded quite a bit since then and now describes itself more broadly as a place to discover founder-led beauty brands from around the world.

The current assortment covers skincare, haircare, makeup, bath and body, fragrance, wellness, grooming, and beauty tools. Familiar names like Briogeo, Ami Colé, and Danessa Myricks Beauty sit next to brands such as Epara, Hyper Skin, and Charlotte Mensah that some shoppers may not already know.

I spent much more time clicking through the unfamiliar ones because I can already buy Briogeo in plenty of places.

Shopping the Site Is Easier If You Start with What You Need

The website has a full brand directory, but the categories are a better place to start unless you already know the company you want. Thirteen Lune has the normal skincare, makeup, haircare, bath and body, and fragrance categories, plus sections organized around specific concerns.

You can browse products focused on areas such as acne and blemishes, dark spots and pigmentation, damaged hair, dry lips, hair growth, anti-aging, firming, and after-sun care. There are also separate categories for shopping Black-owned skincare, haircare, makeup, fragrance, and wellness.

I usually start with a problem, not a brand. Dark spots or dry skin are much more likely to send me shopping than a sudden desire to work through an alphabetical list of serums.

The price ranges are helpful, too. Thirteen Lune has groups for products under $25, $50, $100, and $200, which makes the range easier to sort through because prices can swing quite a bit even within one category.

The current skincare section has products for shoppers in their teens and twenties, plenty around $30 to $60, and some much more expensive serums and treatments. Having all of those price points to browse makes it easier to stay around what I actually want to spend. I also like knowing the price before I get too interested in something—there is no need for me to fall in love with a $130 serum when I was aiming to find something for closer to $30. 

The Brand Mix Is the Main Reason to Shop Here

If I’m replacing something I’ve already bought five times, I’m probably going wherever it is cheapest or easiest to find. Thirteen Lune shines when the goal is to find something new. The skincare section mixes familiar names with smaller brands like Hyper Skin, Epara, and Sweet July Skin. Haircare does the same thing, with bigger names alongside Charlotte Mensah and Kazmaleje.

I knew some of those brands already, but there were enough unfamiliar ones to keep me clicking around. The hair section probably caught my attention most because bigger beauty sites can start feeling repetitive once you’ve seen the same groups of products several times. Here, I kept running into brands I didn’t already know, and I liked that the site gave me enough information to actually get a feel for the company and product instead of just seeing a name and moving on.  

There is also much more fragrance than I expected, including perfume, perfume oils, candles, and discovery sets. Familiar names like Kitsch sit alongside brands like bütün and Veronique Gabai, which I had not come across before. Fragrance is not something I usually buy completely blindly, but it was nice to see that the store was not limited to skincare and makeup.

The Product Pages Give You Quite a Bit to Work With

If I already know the foundation, I barely need the product page. Give me the shade, size, price, and an Add to Cart button. With brands I didn’t know, I spent more time reading before deciding whether I was interested.

The pages I browsed included directions, ingredient lists, pricing, shade choices (where they applied), customer reviews, and Q&A sections. The Ami Colé Skin Enhancing Concealer page, for example, lists 12 shades, application directions, a full ingredient list, and a note about tree-nut oils or extracts. I was happy to see that much information in one place because I am still trying to keep up with makeup trends and, honestly, sometimes I just want to know the best way to use a product before I buy it.

I also liked that I could get most of what I needed without immediately leaving the site to look things up somewhere else. With something completely new to me, I am usually opening extra tabs to check ingredients, see how people are using it, and figure out whether the product is actually meant for what I am trying to do. And on Thirteen Lune, most of that information is already there, so I didn’t have to go searching somewhere else. 

I’m not going to become a cosmetic chemist for the evening, but I do truly read ingredient lists pretty carefully now. My sister has a tree-nut allergy, and once you start paying attention, it’s kind of wild how often unexpected ingredients show up in products that you would never think twice about. The Ami Colé concealer I had just been looking at is a perfect example. I would never automatically think “tree nuts” when looking at a concealer, but Thirteen Lune made that warning easy to spot right on the product page. 

“Coming Soon” Shows Up More Than I Expected

I noticed “Coming Soon” on product cards while browsing the category and collection pages, too, mixed right in with products that were available to buy. It was not always obvious until I was already looking through the products, so after running into it a few times, I started checking that label before clicking through to read more about something.

I really don’t mind seeing what’s coming to the site, but I would rather know earlier that I cannot buy it yet. With so many unfamiliar brands here, I was already spending more time opening products and reading about them, so getting interested in one and then realizing it was not available added an extra step I could have skipped.

Reviews and Extra Context Help with Unfamiliar Brands

Some of the products I looked at only had a handful of reviews. That made me slow down a little more with brands I had never heard of. If there were only two or three customer comments, I leaned more on the ingredient list, Q&A, and brand information instead of treating the reviews like the whole story.

I don’t really need hundreds of reviews to buy something, but one five-star comment is not enough to do much for me either. On products with a lot of reviews, I usually skip around to see what people complained about. Here, there was not always enough customer feedback for that, so I paid more attention to what the product page and brand were telling me.

Thirteen Lune also has a “Shop Talk” section with founder Q&As, how-to pieces, and stories about different brands and routines. I liked having that extra context. I do not need the whole backstory before buying a cleanser, but I do care where I spend my money and who is behind the products I am buying.

There Is Plenty Here without Feeling Endless

There is plenty to browse at Thirteen Lune, but I never felt like I was sorting through hundreds of versions of the same thing. The categories definitely helped. The dark-spots and hair-growth sections were much easier to browse than starting with a broad search and digging through page after page of results.

There are also labels for new products, best sellers, award winners, exclusives, and sales, so you can usually get a decent idea of what you are looking at before reading every description.

There Are a Lot of Sales

I also ended up spending quite a bit of time in the sale section because there were more markdowns than I expected, and I am always up for a bargain. I saw Briogeo and RMS Beauty included, and a few products were marked 50% off. I love a good deal, especially when I am trying something I am not already familiar with, so there were definitely a few things in there that tempted me. I would also check the final-sale label before getting too excited about a markdown, though. The regular return policy is already stricter than what I am used to, so I would not assume a discounted product can go back. 

The Return Policy Makes Me More Careful with Makeup

There is plenty of foundation, concealer, lipstick, blush, and other makeup for which getting the shade right is the whole point. The issue for me is what happens if I guess wrong.

Thirteen Lune requires normal returns to be unused, unopened, and undamaged. Eligible items have to be received within 21 calendar days of the order ship date for a refund to the original payment method, and there is a $7.95 return shipping fee. The company does not offer exchanges.

I am a lot less adventurous with foundation if opening it means I own it. I would not order three shades, planning to test them at home and send back the misses. If I already knew my shade or had researched the formula and color pretty carefully, I would feel differently. Skincare, haircare, body products, and beauty tools don’t make me hesitate in quite the same way because I am not trying to judge a shade from my monitor.

For a normal return, you have to email customer care to start the process. Once it is authorized, Thirteen Lune sends a USPS label, and the item has to make it back within 21 calendar days of the original order ship date. Refunds are generally processed within three business days after an accepted return reaches them, although the company says it can take up to 10 business days for the money to show up, depending on the payment provider.

Damaged or faulty products are handled separately, so the unopened rule is not the same situation if something arrives broken or there is another problem with the order. In that case, you can contact customer care to request an exchange or refund, and Thirteen Lune allows up to 30 calendar days from the order ship date for damaged or faulty items.

A shampoo or skincare product I had already researched would not make me think twice. Foundation or concealer is where I would be more cautious unless I already knew the shade.

Shipping Is Reasonable, but the Shipping Pages Don’t Completely Agree

Thirteen Lune offers free standard U.S. shipping once the merchandise total reaches $50 before taxes and shipping. Orders below that threshold cost $7.95 to ship.

For beauty, $50 is not especially hard to reach, and I am absolutely the person who will add one more thing to my cart just to avoid paying for shipping. Most of the time that extra thing wasn’t even on my list to begin with. So, the threshold itself would not bother me much, but there is a very good chance I would spend a little more just to hit it.

The company’s own shipping information is not completely consistent about delivery timing. The FAQ currently says standard ground transit is three to five business days, while the standalone shipping policy says five to eight. The shipping policy also lists express delivery at $15 for two or three business days. If I needed something by a specific date, I would go by whatever is shown in checkout.

Once an order is placed, there is not much room to change it. Thirteen Lune says customer service may be able to cancel the order or fix an address before fulfillment starts, but neither is guaranteed. I am exactly the kind of person who will be half asleep shopping in bed and realize two seconds after checkout that autofill sent something to an old address, so this is one of those sites where I would actually stop and double-check before hitting purchase.

Club Thirteen Rewards

Thirteen Lune has a free rewards program called Club Thirteen, and I would sign up if I were ordering often. The basic setup is simple: You earn points as you shop and can redeem them for money off later, with faster earning at the higher spending tiers. I am not going to start buying extra skincare just to chase status, but if I am already spending the money, I want the points. Nobody needs to gamify my ability to buy skincare more than it already has been.

How I’d Shop Thirteen Lune

Thirteen Lune is the kind of site I would check when I know what I want to fix, but I don’t know what product I want yet. If I wanted a new serum for dark spots, hair products outside the brands I keep seeing everywhere, or just wanted to browse founder-led beauty companies I had not tried before, this is where I’d go.

Makeup is where I would be more careful. The unopened return policy makes guessing at a foundation or concealer shade a bigger commitment, so I would probably stick to products where I already know the shade or where color matching is not much of a factor.

I would be much more comfortable poking around skincare and haircare, especially with the concern-based collections there to narrow things down. If something I was already considering happened to be on sale, even better. If I already know exactly what I want, though, I might not need Thirteen Lune specifically. I think I’ll use it more when I am still bouncing around between a few ideas.