Beauty Tricks For Hooded Eyes

I know, I know. Everyone I meet is SO envious of the vast amounts of space I have on my lids – NOT.  I’ve always had hooded eyes and not only that, they’re asymmetrically hooded too. It’s not glaringly obvious unless you spend a good few seconds looking into my eyes but hey, it’s one of my little quirks and I’ve learned to embrace it. I am a massive fan of playing with eye makeup and over the years, I’ve learned to adjust things to flatter my eye shape as well as what to avoid. Here are some of my favourites.

Keep dark eyeshadow to the outer half of the eye for that lifted look.

This made a world of difference when I first learned to navigate eyeshadow – the dark colour at the outer corners make the eyelids appear to recede, giving you that eye-opening effect that we all desperately try to recreate with winged eyeliner.

Eyeliner doesn’t have to start from the inner corner.

In fact, starting your wing a little way further along your lash line helps with that wide awake look and gives more depth to the outer portion of your eye. Don’t be afraid to thicken the flick where your lid droops over your lash line a little more.

Keep your eyes open and look straight ahead every so often when doing your eye makeup.

This one revolutionised my eye makeup game – it honestly took me from god awful to slightly less awful. Prior to this, I’d be happily blending away, feeling all proud of myself for the eyeshadow look I’d just created. But once I looked up to see how I was doing, it was as if I’d put nothing on. What’s more, everything creased within a few hours and all evidence of my meticulous colour placement was gone. Don’t be afraid to blend above the crease, people.

Stop creasing in its tracks with primer and a nude powder eyeshadow.

I’ll be honest, I still have plenty of lazy days where I want to look extra… well, extra, but I don’t want to go through the full procedure that comes with it. Well, if there’s one thing you don’t skip – make it your eyeshadow primer. Our eyes spend much more time open than closed during the day and with hooded lids comes a much higher chance of everything rubbing together and creasing big time. (It doesn’t exactly help that I have oily lids!) Primer is your best friend. If not, use a non-greasy concealer or foundation to create your base. Go the extra mile with some matte powder eyeshadow in a nude shade or setting powder all over your lids before applying your coloured eyeshadow, this helps with oil control later in the day and makes blending extra seamless.

Conceal those dark circles.

I usually try to get away with this on a daily basis but I haven’t exactly had a choice recently with life and all. Brighten up those undereyes to keep that tired look at bay, especially if you haven’t done much to the rest of your face. Set with powder if you’re oily like me.

Pull those brows up when you’re applying mascara.

No matter how small my mascara brush is and how careful I am, I almost always end up with mascara on my top lid. Doing this saves you a lot of cleanup and it’s so much easier to see what you’re doing when trying to achieve that curl and separate every lash. Mascara is hard if you aren’t blessed with cow-like lashes, guys.

If you’re a fellow hood-eyed lass, I’d love to hear if you do any of these things or if you have others that work for you (I need all the help I can get). Hit me with those cheats. You go girl.

– J

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Disclaimer: Featured image is the work of Joanna Kosinska, obtained from Unsplash. All other photographs used in this post were obtained from Pixabay under a Creative Commons License and edited on canva.com by J, exclusively for thenellybean.