Your aim may be to look beautiful, but your efforts may be sabotaging your looks. Your beauty routine may be marred by one or more beauty mistakes. If you are not satisfied with the image that you see in the mirror, check out how you put yourself together. Sometimes making a single change can make the difference between blah and beautiful. Here are ten most common beauty mistakes to avoid.
1. Overblushing
Perfect circles of color are great for circus clowns, not so much for everyday makeup. To achieve just the right amount of blush, apply color only to the apples of your cheeks and blend with a large brush. You should also aim for a blush that coordinates with your skin tone and the color palate for the rest of your makeup. Bronze tones tend to look more natural with darker skin tones, while peach and pink work well with lighter skin tones.
2. Failure to Moisturize
Even if you have naturally oily skin, your skin needs moisture to thrive. Fine lines and creases can result from skin that is dehydrated. Choose a moisturizer that is water-based rather than one that is oil-based. If your skin is dry, you definitely need moisturizer.
More: 10 Must-Try Beauty Tips from Your Grandma
3. Electric Blue Eye Shadow
The electric blue eye shadow you rocked when you were seventeen won’t cut it in an office environment. Choose a more muted blue or a blue-gray for daytime wear. If you really love the look of bright blue eye shadow, try applying a thin line along your upper eyelashes, while covering the rest of your eyelids with a more neutral shade.
More: 10 Tips for Choosing the Right Eye Shadow
4. Too Much Lip Color
If you stay at home, you can wear fire engine red lips with a high gloss finish. For everyday occasions, you will have to choose between glossy lips or look-at-me color. If you love the look of showy lips, the rest of your makeup routine must be muted, especially for daytime. Even if you’re dressing for a big date, overdoing the lip color may cause your date to shy away from giving you a goodnight kiss due to the risk of smeared lipstick.
More: 10 Ways to Wear Matte Lipstick
5. Over-Plucking or Under-Plucking
Many women take great pains with their eye makeup, applying multiple eye shadow shades and layer upon layer of mascara. However, many of the same women give hardly a thought to their brows. Properly shaped brows can open up your entire face. Failure to pluck your brows can negate much of the effort that you devote to your eye makeup, while over plucking can leave you with a perpetually surprised look.
More: 10 Ways to Choose the Right Eyebrow Shape
6. Mask-Like Makeup
If you receive compliments like “your makeup looks really good,” that is a clue that you have overdone it. Whether you’re attempting to conceal fine lines or cover up a breakout, slathering on makeup just looks wrong. Ironically, piling on the foundation and powder makes you look older rather than younger, because makeup tends to settle into fine lines and emphasize them. If you are attempting to cover blemishes or other imperfections, opt for a concealer that is slightly lighter than your natural skin tone, and then apply makeup with a matte finish. Makeup with sheen only shines a spotlight on spots.
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7. Keeping Outdated Makeup
Yes, makeup is expensive, and department store or designer label makeup is especially expensive. It is understandable that you would want to hold on to your powders, lip colors and eye shadows as long as possible. However, using outdated makeup may produce distorted results from faded color or liquids that have lost their consistency. Worse, nearly all makeup has a sell-by date beyond which it is really not safe to keep. Think germs and possible infection. Definitely NOT produce a pretty picture.
More: 10 Beauty Rules to Break
8. Improper Makeup Lighting
Many bathrooms have fluorescent lighting, which is all wrong for makeup application. Doing your “face” by the glow of your medicine cabinet lighting can result in makeup that looks great in the mirror but very harsh in the light of day. Instead, try applying your makeup by natural light so that you can see how you will actually look.
More: 10 Ways to Simplify Your Makeup Routine
9. Out-of-Season Color
It is natural to want to hold onto your sun-kissed looks as long as possible. However, makeup with bronze overtones doesn’t work during the winter, when women of nearly every skin tone, including women of color, are usually several shades lighter than they are during the summer. If you are very pale and want to mimic the sun-kissed look, try an artificial bronzer but avoid overdoing it. You want people to think that you spent a week in a sunny location, not that you spent hours baking in a tanning salon.
More: 10 Beauty Mistakes That Age You
10. Brushing Your Hair Wrong
You know that hundred strokes that your grandmother swore by? It’s a sure-fire means of promoting hair breakage and split ends. That much brushing is too harsh for all but the very oiliest hair. If your hair is oily, it needs a shampoo rather than brushing. Brushing your hair from roots to tips pulls it out by the follicles, promoting more hair loss than is necessary. Instead, brush your hair in small sections from the bottom up to remove tangles and give your hair an overall polished look.
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