The art of makeup is to enhance your natural features and highlight your beauty. While some enthusiasts use makeup to feel good, some even use makeup to look younger. While wrinkles, sagging skin, and age spots are natural and beautiful, what is not natural is your makeup causing you to look older than your age. There are certain makeup mistakes that you might be making on a daily basis that might be contributing to this factor.
While we come across makeup tips and tricks every day that can help our makeup be quicker and better, we naturally tend to adopt certain makeup hacks that might not be the best for your makeup look ultimately. These makeup mistakes make you look older than your age, and hold the potential to cause permanent damage to your skin too. Find below a list of some of these mistakes and cross your fingers hoping you don’t make them:
Concealer Overload
You got a huge zit on your chin that has caused extreme redness on your face. But you have a brunch date you can’t miss! What do you do? You try to hide it with some concealer. But that’s not enough, so put some more, and then some more. Stop!
Layering a lot of concealers either on your dark circles or your smile lines, or even your forehead can cause creases later in the day, which might end up looking like deeply set wrinkles. If you think setting it with a powder will help, boy are you wrong. Adding setting powder to this mess will only worsen the situation.
What to do instead: Use a true tone, high coverage concealer to neutralise discolouration. If you still have visible discolouration, you may need to colour correct. Remember to work in light layers, it will keep your makeup from creasing and looking over done. If you want a natural skin-like finish, use a beauty sponge to blend out your makeup.
Did You Colour Correct?
Another reason that can lead you to look older than you actually are, is if you incorrectly colour correct your skin, or completely skip the step. When you apply concealer to your dark under eyes directly, there is a high probability that the area will turn out looking a little greyish. This effect drags your face down and makes you look older.
What to do instead: Avoid this mistake by concealing your dark circles with an orange colour corrector. If you’re trying to conceal redness instead, go for a green colour corrector, and so on. Find a guide on types of colour correctors here and wipe this mistake off of your makeup routine.
You Make Me Blush!
Oh, yes you do! Do you know how beautiful you are? You do not need makeup to tell you that. While makeup is an extraordinary art, the world is full of amazing artists like yourself. Do justice to your art and do not place your blush incorrectly or you’re putting yourself at the risk of looking older.
Blush is our personal favourite step, mostly because it’s one of the easiest parts! But is it that easy? Probably not. When you apply blush under or on the lower part of your cheeks, your face gets dragged down and makes you look older.
What to do instead: To avoid this mistake, trace your blush brush from under the temples of your forehead to the sides of your cheekbones. This application is ideal for face structures that are wider or fuller. For longer facial shapes, you can stay with the apples of your cheeks.
The Instagram Contour
Next on the list is – harsh contour. This makeup technique has such a love-hate relationship with us, we wouldn’t know where to start. When you harshly contour your face and nose, or it does not blend completely, your face can appear dented or extremely hollowed from your cheeks, which in turn makes you look older than you are. Always remember that makeup which looks good on camera, doesn’t necessarily look good in person & vice versa. So even if you decide to follow an Instagram or YouTube tutorial, remember that less is more.
What to do instead: Start light with your contour, pack a little pigment on your brush or sponge, and you can pack more if you require it. Check your makeup in natural lighting to see how it looks in daylight.
Plump To Prune
As we get older, our bodies begin to produce collagen at a slower rate, compared to younger ages. While this ratio affects our skin, hair and nails, and their appearance, another very prominent change you will notice is on your lips. The otherwise plump and always full of colour lips begin to slowly dull down.
This change is not drastic at all, and you might not even notice it at one go. However, pair ageing with dehydration, and you’ve got a recipe for makeup disaster. Not enough hydration or moisture can further affect the plumpness of your lips and can give you pruning wrinkly lips. Applying lipstick or gloss over this can make you look like apursed lip, older woman.
What to do instead: Take care of your lips by moisturizing them frequently, drink enough water, and lightly exfoliate whenever required. Avoid applying matte lipsticks in such cases. Go for a tinted lip balm instead.
Correct these makeup mistakes if you have been making any, and see your makeup look change drastically.
Features Image: Pexels