Eye Makeup for Hooded Eyes

You do the eyeshadow. You open your eyes. You can't see any of it.

A hooded lid folds down over whatever sits above a certain point, so most of what you put on disappears the moment your eyes are open. Put colour in the wrong place and the bit that does show isn't the bit you meant to show.

A few small changes in where the colour goes are the difference between eyeshadow you can't see and eyeshadow you can.

Why the usual advice doesn't show up

Most eyeshadow advice assumes a flat lid on display: blend up into the crease, build colour towards the brow. On a hooded lid the crease is tucked away when your eyes are open, so colour placed there is colour nobody sees, and colour spread evenly across the whole lid mostly ends up under the fold as well.

Where the colour goes

The outer corner and the strip along the lashes are what stays visible with your eyes open, so that's where the colour needs to sit. With one shade, placement is doing all the work.

• Start at the outer corner. Take it slightly outward rather than up into the crease. Concentrated in one place, it shows.
• Sweep what's left across the rest of the lid. Fade it towards the inner corner until there's almost nothing near the nose.

If you've got a darker and a lighter shade, same idea: darker on the outside, lighter on the inside. With one shade, the fade does that job.

Why cream instead of powder

Powder needs somewhere to settle, and on a hooded lid that's the fold. By eleven you've got a line of colour in the crease and not much anywhere else.

Cream behaves differently. It grabs the skin lightly as it goes on and stays where you left it, which on a lid like this is the whole point. A cream also lets you keep the colour low and close to the lashes, where you'll still see it when your eyes are open.

Outside The Lines is our cream eyeshadow stick, in champagne, latte and rose gold. It goes on straight from the stick and blends with a fingertip, so there's no brush involved.

Eyeliner: thin and low

Eyeliner follows the same rule as the shadow. A thick line, or one drawn high, mostly disappears under the fold, and what's left looks like a smudge rather than a line. Thin and close to the lashes stays visible.

• Short dashes along the lash line, joined up at the end. Easier to keep thin and close than one long sweep.
• A little along the upper waterline if you want a stronger line without spending any lid space on it.
• Keep any flick short. Eyes open, looking straight ahead, flick outward from the outer corner and stop early. A long wing needs a flat run of lid to sit on.

Our Steady On eyeliner comes in black, brown, berry and moss. Brown reads softer than black if you'd rather the line didn't do most of the talking.

Curl first, then mascara

Curled lashes show more than straight ones on a hooded lid, so curl first, squeezing from root to tip so the bend is even. Then wiggle the mascara brush in at the roots and pull up and out in one movement.

Our You're Welcome mascara is a tubing formula, so it wraps each lash rather than sitting on it wet, and there's less of it hanging about to transfer while it settles.

If mascara under your eyes is the thing that bothers you most, we've written about why that happens separately, along with what a tubing mascara actually is.

The order

Cream shadow first, concentrated at the outer corner and faded towards the inner corner. Liner next, thin along the lash line. Curl your lashes, then mascara, last.

Check the result with your eyes open, looking straight ahead. Tipping your chin up unfolds the lid and shows you a shape that won't exist again the second you look forward. Plenty of eyeliner has been drawn beautifully onto a lid that was only temporarily that shape.

That's the lot.

The eyeliner, the cream shadow stick and the mascara all live in our eyes range. There's a set of the three too, called All Eyes on You, if you'd rather pick them up together.

We're not trying to change the shape of anyone's eye. We'd just like the eye makeup you put on to actually show up.