Under Eyes; An Underrated Challenge

Want to know one of my favorite makeup tricks for tired eyes?
Dark circles can be a challenge to combat no matter what your skin tone or texture is,
we all have ‘em!
If you want to brighten your eyes and look instantly refreshed and rested, you need to know a thing or two about color theory. I promise, it’s not as hard as it sounds!

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Dark circles, one of the ultimate challenges. Caused by everything from dehydration, sleepless nights and even genetics… I hate to admit, they’re close to inescapable. Don’t despair quite yet as I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve to help out.
Eye Cream, for some people it’s a must have and for others it’s never even a second thought. Personally I feel that eye cream is super important, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I manage to get it on my face every day.

Now I’m taking it back to anatomy class. The skin around the eye area is much thinner and contains far fewer sebaceous glands. This leads to skin being more prone to irritation, sensitivity and of course discoloration. Therefore it helps to have a specifically designed, or at the very least used, product for this area of the face. Personally, use a face moisturizer or an eye cream, either works in the end!

Today we’re talking about all things dark circles

So let’s start with skincare. Every good answer to most skin issues comes from the correct and effective skincare product being used. We’re going to focus on two main issues with under eye circles - discoloration and volume (ie. puffiness)

Puffiness to start! This issue can be caused by diet (fried, salty food!)allergies and genetics just to name a few. The excess volume in the under eye area will sometimes create the illusion of darkness or discoloration simply due to the excess volume.

I’ve found these 3 products have worked wonders on myself and clients that struggle with this issue.

Next we’ve got skincare to target the discoloration in the under eye area. Obviously we know that our dark circles are caused by late nights but dehydration, eye strain, post-inflammatory hyper pigmentation, allergies and genetics. To be honest, dark circles is one of the most challenging issues to address especially as the under eye skin is so thin. Try these three products to help with overwhelming dark circles.

Now that we’ve got skincare out of the way, we can chat makeup. Of course concealer is where it’s at my friends. But there are a vast array of concealers so which one is going to work best.
If you’ve got pretty dark discoloration you’ll want to start with a more full coverage color correcting concealer. Make sure you place a thin layer of this concealer only over the area of most intense discoloration.

We’re working with color theory here, so complementary colors are what we’re aiming for. Fair complexions, you’ll want to look for lighter pastel color correctors. Medium skin tones will want to use a mid-toned yellow, orange, or peach correctors. And for dark tones, try out deep peach to dark orange shades.

Next we can move on actual concealer, I like medium coverage concealers with a skin like texture so things get covered but also aren’t so matte and heavy as to look cakey. These are a few of my favorites.

Start with apply the concealer at the most intense areas of discoloration and gently blend out from there.

A few other concealers which will be a bit lighter and can be used to create more brightness in the undereye area rather can conceal the darkness.

A few PRO TIPS…. if you don’t have one, get yourself a humidifier! It’ll help you out with dehydration throughout the colder, drier months and hopefully help out with the dark circles. Additionally anything cooling is going to help minimize the puffiness and dark circles.

Pop these other few products into the fridge and you’ve got a super powered product.

Just remember, be realistic about your expectations. You might not be able to get rid of your dark circles or puffiness entirely and that’s okay. Keep in mind, real life retouching doesn’t exist and we’re not meant to look like plastic!

And if you want a sneak peek into the BGB check out this tutorial
I pulled from the online classroom.
Best of luck with the dark circles my friends!