How To | 4 Simple Makeup Tips for Darker Skin Tones

Although makeup companies have greatly improved on including tanned skin tones into the product lines, I found that information on what works best on darker skin tones is still surprisingly lacking. So from one tanned skin girl to another, here are four simple tips to improve your makeup skills today:

Most likely than not, the lower half of your face is a slightly different or very different shade than the upper half. You can compensate for that by using either two foundation colours, or a concealer palette. Reddish concealer can brighten the area around your mouth, that’s usually darker or slightly discoloured. I personally use the MAC pro conceal and correct palette in Dark – that red concealer works magic for dark spots, dark circles under eyes and dark areas around the mouth for us Indian girls!

Add orange concealer where the darker areas are. Use sparingly!

Add a skin-matching concealer on top of the orange. Match this concealer to the different areas of the face, ie. if you need two colours, use two.

Use two shades of foundation. It doesn’t need to be as drastic as the photo, it could be just 1-2 shades different, depending on what your skin needs. Start with the middle colour then use up the brighter shade before using the darkest shade.

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2. Your upper lip may be a different colour from your bottom lip, or both upper and lower are discoloured. Neutralize your lips with a lip liner in a colour that’s in between both upper/lower lip colours. For those who have discoloured lip tones, an orangey-toned lip liner or concealer, or a mauve shade could neutralize/brighten your lip colour. Bonus money-saver tip: If you have a concealer palette or even eyeshadow palette that has similar shades to what you think may work, try those on your lips first before purchasing a lip liner in a similar tone.

I actually used a slightly warm mauve lip liner here, but it looks pinker once it blended with my natural lip colour. Bear in mind all lip colours will be blending with your natural lip colour, rather than skin colour.

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3. Clean up your edges with concealer. Since shadows are more pronounced on our skin, using lighter concealer to line the edges of our makeup can really clean up and bring out your features. Use a slightly brighter shade for the edges of your brows, and a matching skin colour or slightly darker colour for the edges of your lipstick.

Left – Before concealer. Right – After concealer, you can see the brows really pop and look cleaner and the lipstick edge is cleaned up.

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4. Don’t be afraid of really warm/hot tones, they will look good on you even if you think they look scary! You can even use these warm yellowy eyeshadows to lightly dust over any parts of your face that looks a bit sallow/lacking life. Makeup should be fun! =)