How much or how little sleep you had, how happy or sad, how much alcohol you drank last night or exercise you didn’t get time to take – it all shows up in your eyes. Eyes are a dead giveaway in more ways than one.
The right eye makeup can perform wonders on an older face – blending away dark circles and bags, replacing thinning brows and lashes and enhancing eye color and sparkle. Makeup and specifically eye makeup often gets forgotten. Everyone ages differently but we all face similar problems around the eyes.
Here are some suggestions for eye makeup that helps solve the problems of older skin:
Best eye shadow for older skin
The problem here is crepey skin, which doesn’t hold eye colour as well as it used to. Generally powder around the eyes is an ageing look – dull and dry. Powder shadow has other disadvantages. Little specks of it fall onto your face when applying it and if the tablet of compressed powder cracks up, it gets emptied itself inside of your purse.
In my humble opinion this really is the best eye shadow ever – for me anyway. You can apply it with a brush or finger tip – and it comes in a fantastic range of subtle colors either matt or some with a slight pearlier sheen which is very pretty on older skin.
Subtle is what you want as skin ages – leave the bright colours and the glitter to the teens and twenties and go for soft enhancement
My favorite colour is Sand Dollar – I wear it all the time and it wonderfully flattering to most skins. African-American, Hispanic or Asian skin tone would need something stronger in color but it could be a great highlighter.
I also bought some matt colours in smudgy muddy tones that blend with it well – Suede and Slate and a lovely deeper gray pearlized color for evening – Galaxy. They can all be blended together – Bobbi Brown does a blender brush just for the purpose – or you can just use a soft clean makeup brush of your own.
Choose a gel eye liner
Avoid very dark brown and black liquid liners which can look hard – you need something with a softer focus. Choose a colour at least a tone lighter than you’re used to.
Hard black lines close up the eye which appears smaller as we age anyway – most of us need to open up the eye and give it definition. A good soft eye pencil is one option or – a gel eyeliner that you mix with a little water to give a very soft paste. Gel eye liners are great for older lids because they give you a soft, gentle line, which you can get very close to your lashes.
Mac have a good one which I have tried but the best gel liner for me is the Long Wear Gel Eye Liner by Bobbi Brown in Sepia Ink. Again – “long wear” is exactly what you get without smudging. Apply with a fine short haired eye liner brush, so that you can control where the line goes and get it as close to the root of your lashes as possible.