Hooded eyelids can develop with age as the skin on your brow bone starts to sag, essentially covering your eyelid and make your eyes look smaller. All your hard work on eyeshadow can be covered up by your sagging brow, so you need to get creative on making your eyes stand out. If you can relate, read on for some makeup tips for hooded eyes that can make your eyes appear bigger and more lifted.
Open Your Eyes
Start applying eyeshadow and eyeliner while your eyes are OPEN. This helps you apply makeup to the parts of your lids that show, not the parts hidden under the droopy lid. If you’ve ever achieved a perfect cat eye flick on a closed lid only to see it disappear when you open your eye, you know what I’m talking about.
Be Careful With Concealer
The eye area is often delicate, dry and wrinkly if you have mature skin. You want to brighten the eye area, but heavy use of concealer will look cakey and only accentuate wrinkles. It’s best to use concealer on the inner and outer corners of your eyes first. Start there and see how much brighter you look. You may not need much more concealer than that. Add as little as you can get away with.
Shape Those Brows
Here’s a trick, style your brows in a way that creates more space for you to work with. Instead of taking the “tail” or end of your brow downward, use a brow pencil to take your brow toward your hairline. Avoid bringing the brow downward when you’re trying for a lifted look.
Add Shadows and Light to Hooded Eyes
Where you place dark and light colors on your lids can either help your hooded eyes or hurt them. Use a highlighter with a hint of shimmer right under your brows on your brow bone. This gives a lifted look to that area.
Use darker shades of eyeshadow on the droopy area. A trick is to lay a tissue on your face to create a straight line from your nose to the end of your brow. With your eye OPEN, shade the outer area of your droopy lid. It’s a great way to guide the placement of shadow and creates a lifted look, as seen in the picture below.
Use a lighter shade of eyeshadow in the corners of your eyes and in the center of your lids. Skip any shimmer in these areas if you have wrinkly lids. Matte shades will work great to add light to the area and are less likely to accentuate wrinkles.
Be Strategic with Mascara
Curl your lashes to really make your eyes POP! Use your mascara to focus on your CENTER lashes. It promotes a more wide-eyed look, makes the eyes look bigger while keeping the attention off the area with the sagging lids.
If you like using mascara on your bottom lashes, it’s best to stick with a soft brown or even clear mascara. Black can sometimes look aging, dragging the eye downward when we want to be focused on lifting.
Draw the Line
To make hooded eyes appear bigger, avoid drawing a thick, heavy line on your upper lids. You want the center area of your lid to stay light, so use apply a very thin line there or no line at all. The thickest part of the liner on your top lid should be focused on the last third of your lashes.
Avoid severe, defined lines. Soften things up by smudging the line a bit, or by using eyeshadow as your liner. For your bottom lash line, try using soft colored liners like bronze on the outer corners to help to elongate your eyes.
These makeup tips for hooded eyes are should help make your eyes look bigger and brighter. With a few little changes to your makeup routine, you’ll see a difference.
You will also like this video tutorial on How to Lift Eyes
