Makeup is the easiest quick fix when it comes to looking younger, and eyeliner is just one cosmetic that has many uses to do just that.
According to beauty expert Nikol Johnson, there’s one way to use it that can make a “dramatic” difference to mature women.
In a video posted on her YouTube channel, she revealed the eyeliner trick she swears by to help mature clients look more youthful.
She said: “I’m teaching you this little sneaky trick that I don’t think you know about, that is going to be a big game changer for women over 50.”
The end result made it look like she was hardly wearing eye makeup at all, and it took just seconds to do.
Nikol first applied some eyeshadow using a nude powder pigment to cover her lid and brighten the area.
Then, she took a matte plum-purple shade with a small “smudge” makeup brush and ran it across the top of her lash line at the base of her eyelid.
She then drew it a little further than the outer corner of her eye to form a straight mini-wing on the edges.
Nikol explained: “So basically what I want to do is keep this eyelid light and then give the drama with my shadow, pretending to be my liner. But it’s not, we’ll go back over with our liner.”
According to the beauty expert, this first step works with a range of colours in the chocolate brown and plum purple palette, but harsh shades like black should be avoided.
The real anti-ageing magic comes with the second layer of eyeliner, for which Nikol used a kohl pencil in a deep purple shade.
She noted that this is a very effective way to brighten and widen the eyes, but for many mature women, there is one common problem that ruins the overall look.
In her video, Nikol claimed: “What I would see when I’d be on location doing makeup on mature women is some of the ladies eyes would have a clear inner line between their eyelid and actual lash line.
“It would be this real prominent flesh colour between all the beautiful darkness on the eye where the eyeliner is in the shadow. But it would be really highlighted having the nude colour under the lashes. So what I always would do – and it made a dramatic difference, is take the pencil and tightline it.”
This involves taking a sharpened eyeliner pencil and gently applying it to the inner lash line to conceal the fleshy colour.
According to Nikol, this will “melt” the eyeliner into the darkness of the lashes and create a “fuller” effect.
She claimed that when she’d do it on clients, it would help the eyes“completely come together” to resemble a natural eye line rather than one that had makeup on.
While some people already use this hack on their lower lash line, the beauty expert warned against it for mature women as it will close the eyes down.
Instead, the goal is to create an elongated yet widened look.
