THE MAKEUP MISTAKES THAT ARE SECRETLY AGING YOU
It’s not just poor skincare, bad hair color, a love of The Beatles and a hatred of TikTok that can show your age. The wrong makeup might also be secretly aging you.
Don’t get us wrong, we firmly believe that it’s totally cool to look and feel your age. Embracing your gray hairs and learning to love your wrinkles? All over that. Looking older than you really are, however? Not so much. And if you take a look into any of the Woosh team’s skincare routines you’ll understand that we’re all about taking care of our skin and aging with grace. Retinol? Hyaluronic acid? Daily SPF? Standard.
But it’s not just great skincare choices that help to preserve your skin and make you look healthy, radiant and youthful. Makeup also plays a major role. From the colors you choose (hint: muddy gray eyeshadow is seriously bad news) to the techniques you employ, the things you do to beautify your face on the reg are absolutely crucial.
So, if you want your makeup to enhance your skin and potentially shave off a few years (rather than add them on), keep reading for the most important makeup mistakes that could be aging you.
Mistake #1: Choosing The Wrong Foundation
Your foundation is pretty much the entire foundation for the rest of your face. The clue is in the name, after all. And because it’s so important, it’s essential you make the right choices. Sure, it’s tempting to zone in on thick, creamy formulations that offer more coverage for your mature skin, but heavily pigmented foundations are not the way to go. In fact, most of them just pool in your lines and wrinkles, and make your face look completely caked in color. Now, we don’t know about you but that’s not what we call a good look.
Instead, we believe that powder foundation is everything. This might be contrary to popular opinion, but hear us out because our Foundation Powders are like no others. Totally non-drying like other lesser formulations, they contain hydrating, softening ingredients like vitamin E and shea butter. Did that get your attention? Good, then you’ll also love the triple-milled texture of our powders which makes them insanely soft and silky, and allows your foundation to move with your skin. In fact, they’re so fine and natural-looking they're likely to leave people wondering ‘are they even wearing any makeup?’
Mistake #2: Brightening Up With Overly Pale Foundation
As skin ages it can become slightly pallid and flat-looking thanks to sluggish circulation and a slowing down of melanin production. This is perfectly normal but it does make it tempting to go for a pale-colored foundation. Because you want your foundation to perfectly match your skin, tone right? Well yes… but not exactly.
In fact, mature skin often benefits better from a slightly darker foundation to help warm up the complexion. You just need to make sure you don’t go too dark – it still needs to blend with your natural skin tone and look as natural as possible.
To help you nail this, our face palettes offer Combination Coverage™ - two curated foundation powder (and concealer) shades in your Fold Out Face and Complexion Palettes – one that’s slightly darker than the other. This allows you to mix and match them or even blend them together to help create the best shade at any time of the year. P.S. Our Shade Finder makes finding your perfect shade incredibly simple.
Mistake #3: Skipping Primer
Primer should become your BFF as your skin matures. Why? Because as skin ages it becomes less smooth and even-looking. Granted this is correctable with thick foundation, but as previously mentioned, that'll age you up lightning fast.
If all this sounds like being stuck between a rock and hard place, don’t worry because there is an answer: primer.
Way better than a heavy layer of rich, creamy foundation is to apply a color-free primer underneath a light, powder foundation. This helps to ‘fill in’ fine lines, wrinkles and any other imperfections you’re not keen on. What’s more our Pre.Face Primer hydrates your skin and gives your makeup the stamina it needs to stay-put for hours. Now isn’t that something you want to get on board with?
Mistake #4: OD’ing On Under Eye Concealer
Speaking of caked-on makeup, another area of your face where it’s better to be light-handed is under your eyes.
Under eye concealer is a bit of a vicious circle. When you’re young and the skin under your eyes is smooth and well suited to concealer, you don’t really need it. But when you’re older and your under eye bags start to take over, your skin has become lined and crinkled making it hard to get concealer right.
Our trick is to apply primer first (see above) then to dab on a light, creamy Concealer only where you need it, rather than all over the under eye area. Grab our Essential Concealer Brush and work in thin layers starting at the inner corners of your eyes first. Build and blend in this area only, then sit back, check out your handiwork and decide if you want to continue further along your eyes. Working slowly along the undereye area allows you to stop before you get too carried away. And this is the key.
Mistake #5: Going All-Out With Blush
Blush is an awesome way to give a youthful-looking flush to your cheeks. But overdoing it as a very bad idea. Go too bright, too dark or too shimmery and it will look garish, unnatural and way too ‘try-hard.’
Our advice is to stick with a natural shade that gives just a subtle glow to your skin. The classic rule is that the warmer your skin tone, the warmer or ‘peachier’ your blush should be. If you have cooler skin tones, however, pink shades are usually more flattering. Start with a very small amount of product then build and blend by swirling it over your cheeks as you need it.
You could also try applying it slightly higher than the apples of your cheeks, kind of on the top of your cheekbones. This is a great trick for lifting the contours of your face. Ooh, and don’t forget to do this BEFORE applying your foundation to make your blush look more like a natural flush than actual makeup.
Mistake #6: Screwing Up Your Eyebrows
Beautifully groomed brows are a true secret weapon for the mature soul. Leave them to their own devices, over-pluck them or, worse yet make them look harsh or too angular and you will age up your face quicker than you can say ‘what’s Roblox?’
All you need to do is live by one simple rule: work with your eyebrows, not against them. Tweeze carefully between the brows and under them, along the upper eyelid only, and do not overdo it. Then, if you need to add color or extra thickness, that’s totally cool. Eyebrows can become thinner as you get older, so helping them out is kind of inevitable.
Grab an eye shadow that’s as close to your natural brow color as possible, then use an angled liner brush to work a small amount over your eyebrows, using tiny, hair like strokes. Concentrate on thinner areas but ensure you stick to the natural shape of your brows and do not square them off, create angles or extend the ends. Big mistake. Huge.
Mistake #7: Wearing Harsh Eyeliner Under Your Eyes
Harsh, heavy eyeliner is going to do nothing in your quest for a more youthful-looking face. So, the solution is easy. Don’t do it. We like to line the eyes with eye shadow rather than pencil as this gives a much softer finish and doesn’t end up looking jagged and uneven over fine lines and creases. Added bonus, right there.
Line above your top lashline, or go all the way around, but don’t line underneath your eyes only as this will accentuate dark circles.
You could also choose a brown shade (Truffle is awesome, btw!) rather than black. Browns are more forgiving and warm up your complexion a treat.
Mistake #8: Vamping Your Lips With Too-Dark Lipstick
When it comes to your lips, we love a strong red lippy as much as the next person. And this season, deep-toned berry shades are everything. However, dark lip colors make your lips look thinner (that’s an extra five years straight away) and they’re pretty severe (plus another five!). Furthermore, strong lips are tricky to nail, especially if you have tiny lines around your mouth that lipstick tends to bleed into.
If you like dark lips, who are we to argue? Just remember, stick with a sheer formulation to reduce its severity and always apply your color with a brush to avoid applying too much. Overdo it and it’ll migrate swiftly into those aforementioned lines.
For the most youthful-looking lips, however, we say go for gloss. In fact we shout it from the rooftops! Gloss reflects the light way better than lipstick which adds the appearance of much-needed volume to your lips (check). It can also give your face a pop of skin-brightening color without being too severe (another check, right there). And if you choose wisely (*cough, Spin-On® Lip Gloss, cough) you will also get the added benefits of lip hydration and extra moisturization thanks to delicious ingredients like hyaluronic acid and shea butter.
Will these tricks make you look 20 years younger? Probably not. But you will welcome a glowing, lifted, radiant and certainly more youthful-looking face.
And who could ask for more than that?
