More than fifty percent of women are dependent on makeup. In other words, over fifty percent of modern women feel incomplete without makeup and make time in their morning routine to apply it on a daily basis.
If you are part of the high percentage of the female population that puts on makeup every single day, you probably have a tried and true everyday makeup routine that you’ve perfected over the years. Chances are, your habitual daily makeup routine has room for improvement. Even if you’re already content with your morning makeup routine, there are still many easy ways for you to make it faster, more practical, and better overall.
1. Purge Your Products
When you gather all of the makeup products you own in one place, you’ll probably be surprised to discover how many dusty makeup palettes, dry mascaras, and other unusable items you never bothered to throw away.
Purging old makeup products that are too old to use or that you just don’t want to wear anymore–e.g. that sparkly blue eyeshadow pot you bought five years ago for an NYE party–can shave minutes off your daily makeup routine by cutting out the time you spend searching through rubble for the products you actually do use. Also, accidentally using old makeup products can be dangerous. Once they expire, makeup can develop bacteria that is harmful to your skin. Keeping track of the makeup products you own and throwing them away once they’re past their prime helps lower your risk of accidentally applying bacteria-infused makeup to your face.
2. Skip Foundation
Contrary to popular belief, foundation is absolutely not a necessity in your everyday makeup routine. You want your makeup to look natural and polished on a daily basis. Caking your face with foundation every morning can make you look over-dressed for a day of work. Plus, applying foundation steals valuable time from your morning.
Switch your regular foundation out for a tinted moisturizer. Apply primer as usual, then concealer, and finish off your look with a thin layer of the moisturizer. Your makeup will look more natural and is much less likely to cake and flake throughout a long day at the office.
3. Highlight Right
Since highlighting and strobing have been top makeup trends for several seasons, most women have already incorporated highlighting into their everyday makeup routine. Highlighting is easy and can make a significant difference in the outcome of your makeup routine, so it’s important to make the most of your highlighter.
Applying highlighter to your face should not take more than a minute. Use a medium tapered face brush to angle highlighter across your cheekbones and up onto your temples. Brighten your eyes by highlighting their inner corners with a small pointed eyeshadow brush. Use the same brush to highlight your brow bones and accentuate the angles of your brows. The subtle details of highlighting these smaller
4. Find Your Colors
To develop the best makeup routine for you, it is essential that you use products that coordinate with your natural coloring. Makeup is meant to enhance your natural features, so you should only wear shades that complement your coloring, not contrast against it.
When you’re shopping for skin makeup like foundation, concealer, or tinted moisturizer, take the time to get shade-matched by a professional at a beauty or department store. If you have a fair complexion, stay away from any skin makeup with too much warmth in them to prevent looking orange. Peach and gold-toned blushes, bronzers, and highlighters complement medium to darker skin tones.
5. Put Eye Makeup First
Doing your eye makeup before you apply any other makeup products can revolutionize your morning makeup routine. When you apply your eye makeup, it’s easy to make mistakes and end up with eyeshadow fallout on your cheeks or mascara clumps underneath your eyes.
Trying to clear up these mistakes after you’ve already applied the rest of your makeup can smear or remove patches of your foundation or concealer. Making eye makeup the first step in your makeup routine saves you the time, energy, and frustration of this clean-up-and-redo process and leaves your face with a cleaner finish.
6. Curl Your Lashes
Curling your eyelashes is a more important part of your makeup routine than you might think. Curled lashes correctly makes your eyelashes should make your eyelashes look noticeably longer and thicker. They should also make your eyes look wider and more alert.
Before you touch your curler to your lashes, blow-dry it on high heat for three to five seconds to help your lashes curve more easily and stay curled for a longer period of time. Then immediately clamp your lashes while the curler is still hot. Open and close the curler to clamp and release your lashes several times. Blow-dry your curler to heat it up again before you use it on your other set of lashes.
7. Stop Using Unnecessary Products
Are all of the makeup products you mindlessly use on your face every day actually indispensable to your daily beauty? It’s easy to get into a habit of adding products to your makeup routine and continuing to use them day after day without considering whether or not they’re really effective.
Using makeup products that don’t make a significant difference in your appearance wastes time and effort. Wearing too many makeup products at one time can clog your pores and lead to breakouts and other skin problems. If you suspect some of your makeup products are ineffectual, try removing them from your routine for a day or two. If you don’t notice a negative difference in how you look, say goodbye for good.
It’s important to spend time and effort transforming your everyday makeup routine into the best it can be. If you’re going to put makeup on every morning, make sure your daily routine helps you enhance your natural beauty as quickly and easily as possible so you can start every day with your best face forward.
