Beauty comes in all colors and cultures. Whether you are an African American, Latina, Asian or Native American woman, you possess features that allow you to stand out from the crowd. By following beauty tips designed for women of your own culture, you can play up beautiful features such as full lips, glossy hair and perfectly shaped almond eyes. Read on to find out 10 beauty tips for dark skinned girls.
1. Beauty Tip for African American Women: Hair Moisturizer is Essential
African American women face unique challenges with their hair. Moisturizer is essential to minimize possible damage that African American hair often suffers.
First, African American hair tends to be dryer than hair of any other ethnicity. This is largely due to tight curl patterns prevalent among African Americans. A majority of African American women also chemically straighten their hair, which causes dryness and can promote breakage.
A significant number of African American women also wear weaves and hair extensions which can also weaken the natural hair. To provide a proper treatment for your hair I would recommend you to use organic shampoos (read the list of ingredients carefully to avoid shampoos with mineral oil, sodium, sulfate and parabens). Moreover, even though you hair need extra moisture, you should break off with petroleum.
Instead use natural oils such as jojoba oil, olive oil, or grape seed oil. Treat your ends with special care; otherwise they will result in split ends.
Before you wash your hair, smear your hair ends generously with coconut oil, wrap it in a towel and leave for 20 minutes. Try also to limit the hair wash to once or twice a week – it is enough to keep it clean and not overdry your hair.
2. Beauty Tip for African American Women: Don’t Fear Bold Makeup Colors
Many African American women have sensuous full lips and gorgeous facial bone structure. You have advantage over women with fair skin – you can use extremely bright tones like gold, fuchsia, silver, which look too striking and blatant against fair and pale skin. Bold colors such as plum and true red often look amazing against dark skin tones.
Glitter is an especially glamorous look for evening. To create an office-worthy look, emphasize bold colors for one feature, such as your eyes or your lips, and maintain a neutral or bare look for the rest of your face. The most important thing here is to choose the palette regarding your skin tone.
You would also better avoid using dark tints in your make-up – they can make you look somber. Depending on your complexion, you can use tens of lip colors. If your skin isn’t too dark, you can try using peach, pink and red colors.
For a darker complexion, choose deep colors like brown, magenta and bronze. Fuchsia, deep red and chocolate brown look great against dark rich skin. Do not forget about blush – they will set off your high cheek-bones and shape the face.
However, always consider the situation and the place. Your looks at the office and at the party should differ.
3. Beauty Tip for Native American Women: Play Up Your Almond Eyes
Many Native American women have beautiful, perfectly shaped almond eyes. If you are blessed with this ideal eye shape, lucky you! You can exercise broad latitude in playing up your gorgeous eyes.
With your rich skin color and beautiful eyes, you can try various shades, however I suggest you to use brown, gold and teal colors. A bit of glitter in the inner corners of your eyes will open your look and create perfect evening make-up.
Conservative office look requires nude colors and no shimmer. If you use cream shadows, powder your eye a bit before you start.
Apply generous coats of mascara along with eyeliner to emphasize your eyes as much as possible. Furthermore, eyeliner is an essential make-up item if you aim to change the eye form or to emphasize the advantages of your eyes.
Don’t forget to sharpen the liner to gain a clear-cut line. For the thin line, I recommend using a liquid eye liner. To make your eye make-up more lasting and flawless, apply a bit of transparent basis – be sure it won’t smudge.
Don’t forget about eyebrows; they’re also a part of eye make-up. Giving your eyebrows correct shape will help you achieve a desirable general appearance. Try to set off your natural, a bit arched form.
4. Tip for Native American Women: Neutral Foundation, Bolder Blush
Many Native Americans have beautiful complexions that hardly need makeup at all. Allow your complexion to shine through with neutral or bare foundation. Adding a bolder blush and distinctive eye colors prevents you from blending into the background.
However, you’d better limit the usage of bold pink and fuchsia blush. Opt for warm peach and bronze colors that will benefit you most.
To determine the place you should apply it to I recommend you to smile. Apply your blush to the apple of the cheeks and blend back towards the temple. Native American women can also shape the face with the help of highlighter.
Plus, a gentle shimmer will be perfect for a party look. Apply it with a broad brush to the area under your eyes, the cheek-bones, your chin and the sides of your forehead.
Powder will help you to hide greasy luster if you have oily skin. Apply it to your T-zone after applying foundation. Try to avoid green and yellow concealers which are common for fair skin girls.
If you need to hide the blotches and blemishes, you can use warm light brown palette. These easy tips will definitely help you to enhance your natural beauty!
5. Beauty Tip for Latina Women: Don’t Overdo the Foundation
Latina women often have beautiful olive or golden complexions that need little or any foundation. Resist the temptation to pile on the makeup in an attempt to look “glamorous.” You’d better use a foundation with light red or yellow undertones, which will perfectly conceal any blotches, redness and blackheads.
Make sure your concealer and corrector are of the same color if you use them both. Add a little bit of golden shades to your foundation to make your face look radiant.
Control the amount of blush you put on. Too intense color will make you look unnatural (not to mention vulgar).
Plus, if the tint is too dark, this can make your face look older. Instead, choose peach and rosy tints to set off your natural skin tone. However, I think the best option for Latina girls is bronzer!
Little pea-sized drop is enough to emphasize your beautiful complexion. Even when preparing for an evening out, a sheer or translucent foundation allows your gorgeous complexion to shine through, and won’t compete with your eye color or your lip color.
Moreover, did you know that a thick coat of foundation can frighten guys away? As for me, it’s rather a strong argument to be careful with this beauty product!
More: 10 Simple Steps to Rosy Pink Lips
6. Beauty Tip for Latina Women: Highlight Your Eye Color
Many Latinas have striking eye colors, ranging from dark brown to sparkling green and blue. Highlight your eye color with the right eye shadow shades: plums for brown eyes, bronze and brown for blue eyes, violet and brown for green eyes and brown, gold or green for hazel eyes.
If you doubt whether you can combine shades in a proper way, choose already composed palettes. They usually consist of 3 or 4 colors, each of them for different parts of the eye.
Put the lightest tint in the inner corners of your eyes and under the eyebrows. It will make your look open and fresh. Apply the medium tints all over your upper eyelid.
Complete your eye make-up by outlining the outer corners with the darkest shade of the palette. Whereas you need some color under your eyes, you should get rid of it beneath! Thus, if you suffer from blue eye circles always use a concealer before applying any make-up.
You can achieve gorgeous look by applying a generous coat of mascara. Experiment with green, dark blue and brown mascara for an outstanding evening appearance. Don’t overdo the eyeliner.
Finally, I always recommend you to put a certain emphasis on your eyebrows. If you don’t feel like using any color, smooth them with a brush and apply transparent gel.
7. Beauty Tip for Asian Women: Adapt Eye Makeup to Your Eye Shape
The unique eye shape that is prevalent among Asians can present makeup challenges. If you have a monolid that is common among many Asians, resist the temptation to create a false eyelid “crease.” Unless you are a makeup artist it is bound to look artificial.
Asian women should also limit eyeliner to the top lids to avoid making their eyes look smaller. Moreover, various line forms will create different eyes! Sure, you need to have an experienced and steady hand to put on a liner impeccably.
If your hand is trembling, fix it on a surface. Start the line from the middle of the eye if your eyes are rather narrow.
By putting some color right under your eyeball you will widen your eyes. However, if your eyes are bigger, start the line from the inner corner and go a bit outside of the outer corner.
Choose the liner you feel most comfortable with: liquid liners, pencils or eye shadows and a slanted brush. A cream eye pencil will help you enlarge your eyes. Apply it on the inner rims and smudge a little bit.
Asian women’s eye form is perfect for cat make-up. Use brown and charcoal colors instead of black to make your eyes look soft and delicate. Just make sure you smudge the line so that the make-up doesn’t look too harsh.
8. Beauty Tip for Asian Women: Rock Bright Red Lipstick
Bright red lipstick can be tough to pull off – but on many Asian women true red lipstick looks amazing. Try a matte shade for the office and a glossy tint for evening affairs.
On the other hand, coral and peach lipsticks often do not pair well with Asian skin. Likewise, bronze lipsticks are usually not a good choice for Asian women.
However, if you don’t want to use red lipstick, you can opt for berries, deep roses and dark apricot shades! Always regard your skin tone when choosing a color of a lipstick.
Lip scrubs and primer will help to gain even and smooth coverage. Put on a bit of powder in order to absorb extra moisture and prolong the life of your make-up.
To prevent the lipstick from smudging use a high quality lip pencil. It may be of the same color with the lipstick or a bit deeper.
If you’d like to create an illusion of full lips, do not outline the lip corners. Apply your lipstick carefully all over your upper and lower lips. If you feel like too much color, dab a tissue for a second – it will absorb the residues.
To create an evening look, you can add a little bit of glitter. Remember that lip gloss is always the final step in your lip make-up.
Apply a tiny drop of gloss in the center of your lips and smudge it with your fingers. Your lips will look gorgeous!
9. Beauty Tip for All Women of Color: Moisturizer and Sunscreen Are Musts
Regardless of your ethnicity, keeping your skin hydrated is essential. Indeed, dark skin contains more pigment that helps to avoid sunburn and skin diseases. That’s why people with fair skin are more likely to suffer from direct sun rays.
Nevertheless, any person has to use sunscreens at least with SPF 15 – it will protect you from more than 90% of sun rays. There’s no sense to use sunscreens with UVB/UVA protection higher than 30 since the higher SPF doesn’t offer higher protection.
If your skin is oily, seek out water-based products. If your skin is very dry or mature, cream-based products are your best bet. If you combine sunbathing and swimming, make sure you refresh the coat after every session of swimming.
Following this tip alone will help minimize the visual effects of aging. Many women of color and black women in particular believe that they are impervious to sun damage.
While it is true that dark skin contains more melanin which protects skin against sun damage to a certain extent, sunscreen is a must regardless of skin tone. Even if your skin does not visibly burn, you may be suffering sun damage that can show up later as wrinkles – or in a worst case scenario – as skin cancer.
10. Tip for All Women of Color: Seek the Right Foundation Colors
Once upon a time, women of color were often unable to find makeup in shades that suited their skin tones. Fortunately, many makeup lines have recognized the need to offer formulas and shades for women of color as well. Take advantage of this situation to seek out a foundation shade that is an exact match for your skin tone.
The most crucial thing I’d like you to remember is that any good foundation is invisible on your skin. When it does its work it should simply disappear.
Naturally, a good product doesn’t enlarge pores, emphasize wrinkles or produce mask-effect. It merges with your own skin tone. So I would advise you to test the foundation before you buy it.
Sometimes even expensive foundations don’t work well. I use a drugstore foundation and the results are fantastic. I would recommend choosing 2 or 3 tones for different parts of your face, if needed. Finally, always consider your skin type. Look for oil-free and mattifying foundations for oily skin and moisturizing foundations for dry skin.
Dark-skinned girls possess really unique beauty. There are many amazing beauty tips you can follow these days, and these are just a few of them.
What are your own beauty tips?
