Asian beauty covers a wide range of skin tones and eye color variations. Whether a woman's roots are in Southeast Asia, China, India, or another area, she can use makeup to highlight the best of her features for a gorgeous look.
Working with Your Natural Asian Beauty
The best tip of all is to work to enhance the natural beauty of your face. Develop the exotic features that make you unique to look your own beautiful best.
Eyes
For the Hooded Eye: With a hooded eye, the goal is to open them up for a brighter overall affect. To create a wider eye and still maintain the beautiful shape, use a subtle contouring influence.
- Start with an overall application of a light shadow, from the lid to the brow.
- Use a dark, medium color eye shadow on the hood of the eye, covering up the part of the lid that you want to recede. Then blend the darker shadow with the lighter color for a more natural recession. Make sure to avoid contouring shadows that are too dark; as they will only make the eyes look smaller.
- Once the shadow is in place, line the entire eye. This will bring out the natural drama of the Asian eye. Deep dark eyeliner or shadow colors are good here. Smoky eye makeup is also a great look on Asian eyes.
For Wide Eyes: Any combination of shadows and liners can be used with this eye; the only thing you'll need to decide is if you want to make the eye look smaller or wider.
- For smaller-looking eyes, use a liner to line the bottom of the eye, taking care to line as close as possible to the lash line. This will give you an amazing, "fierce" look.
- Use a very fine point eyeliner to create a thin line along the top lid if your eyes are naturally small; heavy liner can make them appear puffy.
- If you want to make the eyes look wider, stay away from lining underneath the eye. Instead, line the top lash as usual and add a sparkly shade to the inner corners of the eye (the part of the eye that is closest to the nose). Try a shade in sliver or gold, whichever works best with your skin tone. The key here is to only use this lighter shade in this area.
- For even wider eyes, line the bottom lash line with a white pencil.
Eyebrows
To Fill Brows: Eyebrow shaping is critical for a complete Asian beauty routine. It makes a significant difference, as it can lift the face and open up the eyes.
- Use a stiff eyebrow brush.
- Add a little brow gel to hold.
- Fill in the gaps with brown shadow or liner.
Practice this often until you get the look that brings the most strength to your eyes.
Beautiful Arches: If you want to create a beautiful arch, take a long eye pencil and hold it diagonally so that one part of the pencil is across the tip of your nose, and the other end is at the outer edge of your pupil; this is where your natural arch falls. From there, begin to create an arch.
Another trick that is less complicated is to move very close to the mirror and find where the outer part of your pupil lies. This will also direct where to create an arch.
Lashes
Curl your lashes before applying mascara. Curling will instantly create the effect of a larger, wider eye. When you do apply mascara, use a light hand. The goal is to accentuate your eyes, but not over power. Brown or black thickening mascara is recommended.
Skin
Always embrace the natural look of your Asian skin. Don't try and make it pinker through foundation, as that will simply leave you looking like a doll. If you use foundation or concealer, always choose one in shade that matches your natural undertones. This will help maintain the correct coloring for your face and create a more youthful, alive glow.
Lips
Lips are the gem of an Asian beauty. They are almost always naturally full and gorgeous. The lips are the one area where there are very little rules in Asian makeup techniques. This is your opportunity to spice up your look and have fun. An Asian woman can leave the house with only her red lipstick on for a simple and elegant look. Olive skin tones look best in the following lip colors:
- Strong reds
- Deep roses
- Berries
- Toffees
- Mahoganies
- Darker apricots
- Brown-based red lipstick
Enhance the lips with this technique:
- Apply the lipstick shade of your choice.
- Then, using a lip gloss in the color/flavor of your choice, apply to the center of the lower lip only. This will create the illusion of luscious, full lips.
Blush
With the even complexion of most Asian women, applying a little blush can go a long way. As the face shape of most Asians is round or square, a touch of blush at the top of the cheeks will brighten up the perfect canvas, add pop and create cheekbones that will be the envy of everyone. Oranges, peaches, corals and soft pinks are great blush colors for olive skins.
Work with Your Natural Beauty
Always make sure you play up your best features and pay attention to the details and coloring of your face. What looks good on another Asian woman may not work for you, so be sure to try out many different techniques and colors until you find the makeup style that works with your particular features.
