16 Makeup Tips and Tricks To Look Younger

I’ve been wearing makeup for as long as I can remember. I enjoyed barely-there, no-makeup makeup looks. Then I changed things and started experimenting with full-face glams.

But when I realized that my makeup started to make me look older, I changed things once again. These days, I enjoy makeup that makes me look younger!

If this all sounds familiar and your makeup routine needs an update, no worries. There’s no shortage of makeup products or makeup tips and tricks to help us along the way. But here’s the most important of them all: skincare!

If you want to look younger with makeup, focus more on skincare. I mean it because it’ll change everything. Start with a clean face and layer your toners and serums. Finish your skincare routine with a glow serum and a glow moisturizer.

Hydrated skin looks dewy and healthy and it becomes much, much easier to layer makeup on that skin. If you’ve got that covered, keep reading for the best makeup tips to look younger.

These are different makeup techniques, in no particular order, that you can try here and there. As a late 30-something myself, I keep updating this list as I experiment with different ways to create a youthful makeup look.

How to Look Younger with Makeup

1. Go for Light Coverage

Full-coverage makeup, which tends to be heavy, matte, and waterproof is almost guaranteed to make you look older. It has its place but it usually accentuates wrinkles around the mouth.

Instead, use low/medium coverage foundations or try CC creams or tinted moisturizers as a natural-looking, breathable alternative to foundation.

Keep your base makeup simple and stick with 1 or 2 products. Consider applying an illuminating primer underneath to achieve a radiant, youthful look.

2. Opt for a Dewy Finish

This is actually related to the first point. Dewy finish base products tend to have medium, natural coverage and they don’t look as heavy. There’s no need to obsess over matte finish base products. A matte finish foundation gives you a smooth, almost airbrushed finish.

But if you have texture irregularities like large pores and some loss of skin elasticity and wrinkles, just like all of us normal people have, it becomes difficult to maintain that look all day.

When matte makeup starts to crease, it creates cracks in the wrinkles on the face, drawing attention to that area. But when dewy finish makeup starts to crease, it looks much more natural and much easier to fix.

So go for light coverage foundations and skin tints, which tend to have a thin consistency, making them very easy to blend, apply, and fix. Needless to say, dewy finish products make the skin look more luminous and youthful.

3. Focus on the Upper Parts of the Face

As you get older and wiser, your skin tends to droop. It’s gravity. As a general rule, you need to go in the opposite direction to look younger with makeup.

That’s why accentuating the lower parts of your facial features doesn’t help. For eyes, focus on the upper eyelid. For lips, focus on the upper lip. And for the cheeks, focus on the very high point of them.

Try to avoid applying blush and bronzer closer to the lower part of the face, which is a mistake we all tend to make. In essence, try to keep the colors for the upper part of the face.

4. Try to Perfect Your Base Makeup

This is a guaranteed way to achieve a more youthful appearance with makeup. When I say base makeup, I mean focusing on creating well-blended glowy skin. This is what I’ve been doing recently.

Because there’s always a chance to mess things up with eye makeup or cheek makeup, especially when I’m in a hurry. So I focus on creating a nice canvas with good skincare. Then I layer an illuminating primer and then I apply a low coverage foundation.

After that, mascara and lip gloss. That’s it! Considering that wrinkles, fine lines, and uneven skin tone are the things that tend to make us look older, sometimes focusing only on complexion makes things a lot easier.

5. Choose Cream Over Powder

Lightweight cream makeup products are easier to blend and less likely to cake. As a general rule of thumb, go for creamy eyeshadows, blushes, bronzers, and highlighters.

They can move around and they may not be as budge-proof as powder options. But that’s why they look more natural and can make you look much younger.

Also, consider multi-purpose makeup products like lip and cheek tints that can be used anywhere on the face. They tend to be more practical and you utilize one color to create a makeup look, which is quick and easy.

6. Use a Brightening Concealer

Use a brightening concealer and use very little. It sounds like covering less would defeat the purpose. But with textured skin and wrinkles, going for thick concealers does nothing but magnify them.

Use a liquid or a very lightweight concealer with a radiant finish on well-hydrated skin. You can also try under-eye brighteners which have low coverage but make the under-eye area look more radiant and youthful.

Start blending from the outside and move closer to the lower lash line. But don’t cover the lashline. It’ll look unnatural. Remember to dab a tiny bit of concealer on the outer corner of the eye to lift the eyes.

7. Line Without Winging

Winged eyeliner is a struggle on perfectly tight and smooth skin. It’s worse for the eye area that’s showing signs of aging like crow’s feet and fine lines.

In the case of wrinkles, the wing usually falls on top of the wrinkles, especially when you have hooded eyes, making them more visible. So forget the wing and focus on defining the eyes by lining the upper eyelid.

8. Avoid Lining the Lower Lash Line

The eye area is the first one to show signs of aging. Fine lines, under-eye wrinkles, under-eye bags, and dark circles happen on the lower part of the eye. So it’s not a good idea to accentuate this if you want to look more youthful.

This is especially true if you’re not wearing eyeshadow or going for a particular smokey eye look. Jet black lines on the lower lashline can make the eyes look droopy. Keep that area clean.

9. Leave the Eyebrows Alone

Filled-in eyebrows with obsessively defined shapes look unrealistic and can give you an angry face. Instead, subtly define the eyebrows without going overboard.

A clear brow gel to brush up the brows is more than enough. And they don’t need to be perfectly plucked either. Leave a few bushy areas here and there to make them look as natural as possible.

10. Use a Cream Highlighter

Use a cream highlighter to highlight the inner corners of the eyes. This trick is incredibly helpful as it opens up your eyes and makes you look well-rested, fresh, and wide awake. You don’t have to leave it there.

There are illuminating pens or skin luminizers you can use to just dab certain areas of the face like above the lips, on the brow bone, high points of the cheeks, and the center of the chin. Remember to use little and be subtle.

11. Bronze without Contouring

The potential problem with contouring is that if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can make things worse. You can look older while trying to define your face.

Keep in mind that we lose facial fat as we age and we tend to lack facial volume. Contouring creates a sculpted appearance, slimming down the face and cheeks. So it’s not really working as great for us at this point.

Instead, focus more on bronzing, which tends to be more flexible and doesn’t require a professional level of know-how to do. Warm up your complexion by focusing on the outer edges of the face like your temples and jawline.

12. Use More Brown

Speaking of bronzers, focus more on using brown colors as opposed to black. Browns create softer looks and can give the illusion of a much younger complexion. Go for brown eyeliners, brown mascaras, and brown eyeshadows.

I’ve been doing this and I swapped my black liquid eyeliner with a brown eyeliner gel. The color is so soft that even if I try to create a winged eyeliner look, it doesn’t look out of place. I think the color brown leaves a lot of wiggle room to make mistakes.

13. Don’t Use Everything

You don’t need to use every single makeup product. Bronzer, blush, highlighter, powder -you don’t have to layer everything! It looks much better when you prioritize only one.

14. Go Easy on Setting Powder

There may be times when you want to make your makeup last longer so you’ll be tempted to use setting powder. Don’t. Go easy on setting powder because it can settle in fine lines. Instead, set your makeup using a dewy setting spray.

If you have to use a setting powder, invest in a quality product and use very little. A high-quality setting powder smoothes out your skin with a very light-handed brush swirl. Less is more with setting powder!

15. Go for Nude Lips

With age, the lips tend to lose color for some reason. And with less color, the shape becomes tricky to define. Too much color on the lips is very likely to accentuate the issue.

That’s why sticking with nude lips is the safer option. You can also consider tinted lip balms with lip-plumping properties and neutral-colored lip glosses to create the illusion of fuller lips.

When lining your lips, make sure that the color of the liner matches the color of your lipstick. Otherwise, the difference draws unnecessary attention to the lips and makes you look older than you are.

Having said that, there’s something about red lips that’s just so empowering that it’s more satisfying than looking a few years younger, don’t you agree?

16. Learn to Blend Properly

Sometimes, we do things to create a cheerful, youthful look. Blush is a good example of this. It can look amazing on any skin tone. But these types of products require a good amount of blending.

Otherwise, it looks unnatural, out of place, and actually out of date! When not blended properly, blush can make you look like a clown, bronzer can look muddy, and eyeshadow can look streaky.

So whether it’s blush, bronzer, or eyeshadow, take your time with blending. Slowly build the color until you have a seamless, blurred-out appearance,

At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with wearing makeup that shows your age. It has to make you feel better and nobody else! But if what you’re looking for is makeup tips to look younger, these should cover it. Remember, always focus on the upper part!

Read Next: How to Change Your Look with Makeup