Your makeup can significantly enhance or detract from your mature beauty. One of the top makeup blunders I have witnessed is too pale a foundation color coupled with too dark lipstick and eyebrows. The result, as shown to the left, is gothic and essentially unattractive for our age bracket.
Your make up foundation color should complement your natural skin tone
On the left photograph there is a light flaw concealer all over the face, which is fine. However there is nothing over it. So the result is shiny white skin. There should have been a light coat of liquid foundation over this. I have read that in choosing liquid foundation you should use a color that blends in exactly with the skin (checking it by seeing if it fades into your hand). I disagree with this and actually like a foundation that is slightly darker than the skin tone by a teensy half shade. I think this gives a golden tone to the skin and it looks great.
I do like liquid foundation over concealer as this softens the skin. You only need a little bit of liquid foundation, but you still need it. If you use powder only (like the Minerals makeup I have seen marketed on television) the powder gets stuck in your wrinkles and I don’t like it. Powder can go on top of a light coat of liquid foundation but not replace liquid foundation altogether. I think younger women with flawless skin can totally bypass the liquid foundation and just use powder. But for mature skin, I really like a very thin application of liquid foundation to even out skin tone and flaws and make the face look like a more perfect younger canvas.
A pressed powder, also in a light golden tan tone then can go over the liquid foundation. Apply it until your skin is neither too white nor too tan looking. This will give a nice natural matte color all over the face and cuts out the gothic pastiness you see on the left.
Avoid dark lipstick colors as it tends to look harsh and draw attention to flaws in a more mature womans mouth/lip region
The next problem with the look on the left is that the lipstick is too dark, which also contributes to the pasty look. If should not be that dark. Dark lipstick rarely looks good on older women. It has an aging effect. For one thing, mature women tend to have more aging around the lips including wrinkle lines above and around the lips and thinner lips in general. Regardless of your lip size though, I think drawing too much attention to the lips with a dark color drags the eyes down to the lips too much. I think women look way way more youthful if, when I look at them, my attention is drawn first to their eyes. A little bit of color on the lips is fine, but it should be totally natural looking. Red lipstick or maroon dark lipstick on older women is hideous and you should avoid it.
Eyebrows. Eye brow pencil is a must as elderly women lose brow hair from years of over tweezing and their eye brows get too sparse. They need definition with a pencil yet don’t get over zeolous and draw eyebrows in to dark or thin
The eyebrows on the left are also pretty dark and look better a bit thicker and penciled in with a more subdued lighter brown. The lighter brown is also way more pleasing with the really short awful bangs that are shown. With older women, eyebrows tend to lose themselves. I don’t know whether women have plucked them gone over the years, or they are going gray, but I see alot of faded and missing eyebrows on women. I’ve gone through all different eyebrow styles and lucky for me I have some serious don’ts saved up to show. This eyebrow on the left is really too dark and too thin. It is drawing attention away from the eyes. Eyebrows are incredibly important for creating a frame in which you are going to showcase your eyes. I don’t mind a penciled in eyebrow if you are short on eyebrow hair, yet you don’t want it to stand out and be blatently obvious or harsh looking. Just try to get a natural looking color and shape to it as best you can. Get an eyebrow pencil as you definitely need one and try it out. Get a shade that is close to your eyebrow color. Filling in sparse areas of your eyebrows and accentuating the shape slightly can really change your look and enhance your eyes!
Avoid Pale, Shimmery, Pastel Eye Shadows. Sparkly makeup has an aging effect. Go for natural earthy color cosmetics with strong but muted tones instead.
On the left photo is an all too common beauty blunder I see which is that the lids and brow bone are left too light. In fact the brow bones just under the eyebrows have a white eye shadow on them. I have read recommendations for a white powder on the eyebrows to brighten and lift however this does not look good on older women! It looks too ghostly and shiny. Shiny, pearly, sparkly pale eye shadows do not look good on mature women. On the right you see the white powder taken off. The color is more neutral and the lids have a basic tan/brown color. Finally black eyeliner is used on the inside rim of the lower eyelid to frame the eyes better.
This example shows that you can easily do your makeup colors completely wrong and achieve the exact opposite effect than what you desire. Shifting around the colors make the woman on the right look incredibly more beautiful.
Makeup Colors are more important than Makeup Brand. Aesthetically pleasing colors make the woman at right look years younger than the woman at left.
