By applying eyeshadow to your mature eyes in the right color, location and texture, you can easily make yourself look ten years younger. One of the biggest mistakes older women make with their eye shadow that creates awful hooded eyes. You don’t need cosmetic eye surgery for this eyelift trick. Photograph examples of good and bad celebrity eyemakeup provided!

Eye Makeup for the Mature Woman. In this photo example I demonstrate how heavy cat eyeliner and nude eyelids can age you by 10 years so don't make this mistake. Look younger!

I have read makeup and style articles about how to lift your mature eyes and look years younger. I’ve seen all of the makeup tips from using neutral colors for mature skin to using a concealer and eye primer, eyelash curler, and so on. Essentially, the tips are telling you what to do as opposed to what not to do. Sometimes though, it is easier to grasp what to do by knowing exactly what not to do (ergo all those useful Don’t tips in the fashion magazines).

In the case of women over forty, one of the biggest makeup mistakes made is in how they make up their eyes. The biggest mistake is that an older woman tries to do a cat eye look ala Mac makeup. You know… the pale lids with heavy black eyeliner line on top of the eyes that fishtails out at the end of the eyes. At left in my Do and Don’t photo shown, is this awesome magazine quality makeup look on a Mac Makeup model. It looks awesome on her! Yet on you, it is more likely to look awful. It is a great makeup look for the younger woman yet a terrible makeup look for older women. Across the top of the photo example I show four women wearing the look and how it actually ages them.

Look at the four don’t pictures at top right. They emulate the Mac look at left but see how it ages them. When women age, their upper eyelids tend to droop, sag and lose the crisp skin indentation they used to have when they were more youthful. Because there are also wrinkles at the outer edge of the eyes, the effect is even more accentuated. When you have black eyeliner on it serves to demark the real estate between the liner and the eyebrow. It frames it! So basically, if you put a strong black liner on your upper eye you are framing the aging eye area between the eyeliner all the way up to the eyebrow. Bad idea! If you do this your eyes are going to look buggy and fleshy and old

Adding crooked fake eyelashes to the harsh black liner and pale lids adds insult to injury. If the lashes aren’t put on right they can make one eye look bigger than the other. Fake eyelashes have to be put on perfectly otherwise they accentuate aging flaws and asymmetry between your two eyes. Aging (or bad plastic surgery) can often cause eye asymmetry and if you have one false eyelash sticking out and one false eylash sticking upward it is not going to help matters (see bottom two makeup photos of the bug eye don’ts quad). All four of the don’ts have too neutral/pale a shade of eye shadow on them as well, so the crease of the eyelid is totally lost in translation.

If you want to wear some evening makeup and you are over forty and you want it to look amazing, check out the Do examples at bottom right. There is liner, however it is more akin to a “mini” cateye. It is precise and just accentuates the inner lower rim line and the upper eyelid mostly towards the outside. The cat eye does not try to extend much past the eye either. The eyeshadow color on these two ladies is natural looking yet stronger (I call this strong neutral as opposed to pale natural). What it does for them is it defines the upper eyelid and creates a visual separation between the crease and the skin below the eyebrow. This makes the eye look prettier and also more youthful.

If you need to go super natural with the makeup look then keep it all natural. The ladies on the upper right could have looked better had they gotten rid of the harsh liner at the very least. The model at the lower left demonstrates a more natural look. If you look carefully the woman at lower left does have a darker matte eyes shadow on that still delineates her upper eye lid from her under brow skin. Her overall look is natural and nothing is out of place. The Don’t women have eyeshadow on that is more of an orange rust shade (as opposed to matte neutral tawny) which is not becoming on them either.

So remember if you are a mature women in your forties or above, don’t make these mistakes. Don’t overdo the upper eye liner and wrongly combine it with a nude skin eyelid because you will look older than your years. Go for neutral but strong colors and create an upper eyelid for yourself by using color to accent it. Use mascara and an eyelash curler to enhance your lashes and don’t wear falsies unless you’ve practiced and can get them on without one tilting. If you have heavy upper eye lids like the upper two women, use the eyeliner only at the outer half or third of the eye to leave your eye opened up. Make the line precise, thin and close to the lashes so you don’t look like you drew the line with a fat sharpie.

I may not be a celebrity makeup artist, but trust me I look at more photos of older woman that you could possibly imagine! I know what looks good and study images regularly and have tried these looks on both myself and others. You do not have to be a pro to get a youthful makeup look. Color choices and knowing where to put them is actually more important than being artiste. Cat eye and stunning dazzling looks for the younger generation don’t always translate well to the mature older woman. When you are older you need to learn all the anti-aging tricks in the book. You are applying makeup for an anti-aging effect not just to copy a magazine party look. Remember that always and I promise you will start shaving a decade off your looks with your makeup tricks alone.