It’s no secret that makeup gives us confidence, but did you know that it makes you feel smarter as well? By amplifying your natural beauty, you’ll feel as though you can take on the entire world.
One of the best ways to bring out all of your beautiful features is with contouring and highlighting.
If you’re new to the world of makeup or only stick to a simple routine, then keep reading. Listed down below is our contour and highlight guide to help you feel more radiant than ever before.
The Basics of Contouring
Face contouring is the act of using both a darker and lighter shade of foundation to chisel away at certain areas of your face. You’ll apply a contour after you’ve already layered on your regular foundation color.
For example, pretend that you dislike the shape of your nose. With some clever contouring, you’ll create an illusion as though you’ve had rhinoplasty surgery by Dr. Mike Majmundar.
Contouring creates extra shadows that our eyes tend to ignore, causing us to look at other features that we want to accentuate. This effect works even better when used together with highlighting.
Masking the Right Places
The trick with a good face contour is to find the right balance. You don’t want to apply so much that your cover up your entire face with different conflicting shades. It’ll end up looking sloppy and uneven, which is not a look any of us want for our makeup.
Instead, take a look at a contour face map and use the darker and lighter shades in the same areas. The typical places for shading are along the tip of the nose, cutting into the cheekbones, the jawline, and at the temples. For the lighter foundation, under the eyes, underneath the shading on the cheeks, and the chin are all great starting places.
Once you get in some practice with these traditional areas, you’ll soon learn where you like a heavy contour and where you like something softer. Adjust according to your style as you start to feel comfortable with the technique.
Creating a Smooth Transition
When you first try contouring, you might think you’re doing it wrong because you’ve got three different tones all over your face. This is the part that often scares away makeup beginners but blending will make everything better.
Use your favorite tool, such as a damp beauty sponge, and start bouncing along the edges of the different colors. Go in small bouncy circles as you blend the colors, but don’t smear the makeup. Keep your touch light but firm so that you concentrate the blend in those transition areas without spreading the other color too far.
Sometimes the blending tool doesn’t suit our style. If you don’t like the results with one tool, try another one until you get that perfect blend.
Keep it in Place
Once the contour is placed, you don’t want it to move and mess up all of your hard work. A contour that moves and smudges creates all the wrong kinds of shading on your face and lowers confidence levels.
Always use a light powder over your entire face to help keep the foundation from getting ruined throughout the day.
A big fluffy brush is perfect for this kind of application as you’re able to cover a lot of area in a short time. Plus, the fluffy quality of the brush lets that loose powder glide over your face without ever accidentally smear your contour before it’s set in place.
The Basics of Highlighting
Face highlighter is like the icing details on the cake. There aren’t too many of those fancy florals, but they bring the whole ensemble to a higher and more beautiful level.
With contouring, you’re chiseling out your features to turn eyes away from certain areas. With highlighting, you’re putting a spotlight on certain areas to catch the eye.
It’s shiny, it sparkles, and it brings a whole new kind of fun to the world of makeup. If you’ve never given this beautiful product a try, then you’re in for a real treat.
Put Focus On the Right Places
Similar to contouring, you don’t want to put highlighter in too many places at once. Less is more with this shiny element to your makeup style. This is why the best tool for this job is a thin but wide fan brush, or a pencil brush.
The most iconic place to put a good amount of highlighter is right on the cheekbone. Other popular places include the very tip of the nose, edge of the chin, or even over your cupid’s bow. When in doubt, place highlight in the same areas as you did the lighter tone of foundation, but in lesser and more concentrated quantities.
The idea is to catch the light so that you’re pulling focus onto the center of your face. It makes your face appear thinner and more angular when you’ve got the beautiful combination of both contour and highlighter working for you.
Experiment With Color Combinations
It’s a common mistake to think that highlighter is a simple metallic shine to add to your face. The cool thing about this type of makeup is that it comes in many colors with several different effects.
Metallic sheen, sheer glow, and sparkling glitter are all added to different highlighter brands to make it a lot of fun to mix and match. Whenever you feel like amping up your makeup game, try out a new type of highlighter.
It’s the perfect way to finish off any look.
Use This Contour and Highlight Guide to Feel Your Best Every Day
Use this contour and highlight guide to start practicing your technique. It takes some time to perfect the right areas to shade or highlight, but keep at it. Find what areas make you feel the best, as that’s the most important part of any makeup look.
With a little practice, you’ll create a work of art every time you apply your makeup.
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