There are so many ways you can turn back the clock with makeup. Below are 14 that will make the biggest difference in the shortest amount of time:
Moisturize (Duh!) Obvious, but it bears repeating because all other steps are worthless if you don’t do this one. Before you even think of applying makeup – as in while your skin is still damp from cleansing – slather on a moisturizer.
Choose Liquid Concealer As you age, you have more to conceal, but it can draw attention to lines. You want a product that hides redness and circles without getting cakey, and that means you want a liquid cover-up in a click pen. The light reflectors in Yves Saint Laurent Touche Eclat blur imperfections and give skin a luminous look.
Buy a Yellow(ish) Foundation Not Big Bird yellow, just yellowish. Yellow warms up the skin, and the warmer your skin looks, the younger it looks.
Use a Sponge or Brush You may be tempted to cover up every imperfection with foundation: Don’t. A damp sponge or brush is your new best friend (we swear by the BeautyBlender, but any wedge one will do). Wet your sponge under the faucet, squeeze out the water and put a dab of foundation on the back of your hand. Pick up the foundation you need with the tip and apply it in dabbing motions on your face.
Skip Tinted Face Powder Covering your skin in powder can mean the difference between a fresh face and a dull one. In other words, skip it. If you feel naked without powder, use a translucent, light-diffusing powder – nothing tinted – to set your base. We have found Sonia Kashuk Barely There Looser Powder does the trick.
Show Off Your Bone Structure After years of smiling into a mirror to isolate the apples of your cheeks, you can now give it a rest. Women lose fat in their face as they age. So take advantage of it: Rub your blush along the highest points of your cheekbones – it makes your bone structure stand out.
Tweeze, But Only If You Absolutely Must As you age, your face becomes more asymmetrical, but it’s a big mistake to try to correct it by reshaping your brows. Tweezing too much won’t reshape anything – it’ll just make your brows thinner. If you tweeze at all, just clean up the most obvious errant hairs. If you need more shaping than that, go to a professional.
Choose a Light Brow Pencil When you’re filling in your brows, use a pencil that’s a shade lighter than your natural coloring (if you’re blonde, go one shade darker), and hold it at a 45-degree angle, as opposed to perpendicular to the skin. The strokes will be softer, and the brows will look more natural. We like Anastasia Brow Pencils at Sephora.
Curl Your Lashes If you’re over 35, you need to be curling your lashes since eyelashes flatten as you age. Even if you skip mascara, curling your lashes makes your eyes look bigger and brighter.
Apply Eye Shadow Base Patting the tiniest dab of eye-shadow base or primer on the lids before your shadow will keep it in place; this is especially important if your lids have even the slightest wrinkles. A really good option to try is Smashbox Photo Finish Lid Primer.
Wear Brown Eyeliner You have been using black eyeliner since college, you wear it every day and you could apply it with your eyes closed (and probably do). It is time to end that relationship. Deep brown has the impact of black, but looks less jarring. It gives you all the intensity, but in a more sophisticated, subtle way. Draw the pencil along the upper lashes only, and “lift” the lines at the outer corners with a cotton swab – flicking the liner up at the outer corners with the cotton swab to create the tiniest wings. It is an easy way of opening up the eyes.
Don’t Shy Away from Shimmer A bit of soft shimmer is flattering as you get older because it brings light to the face. A woman’s skin starts to lose its inherent radiance when she hits her 30s. Dab a very sheer formula just on the cheekbones, not on the brow bones, the apples of the cheeks or the lips. It adds a very subtle, youthful and pretty dimension to your features. Try Giorgio Armani Fluid Sheers in No. 2 for a stunning champagne shade perfect for light skin, or No. 10, a golden beige, for medium to dark tones.
Choose a Lengthening Mascara Lashes get thinner as you age, so conventional wisdom says you need a thickening mascara to bulk them up. But common wisdom is wrong – your lashes can’t support the extra weight. Instead, use a lengthening mascara, like Lancome Definicils High Definition Mascara, which tends to be lighter on the lashes, and look for mascaras with thin wands so you can easily coat each lash.
Switch to Nude Lips It is a fact that as we age our lips get smaller, especially the upper lip. The best approach is to stick to shades that enhance your natural lip tone, rather than bringing attention to the area. Look for something between your natural lip color and a berry shade that will just boost your natural tone. I have stood by Clinique’s Pink Chocolate for years; I have a tube in every handbag.
