How To Make Your Eyes Look Bigger With Or Without Eye Makeup
These makeup tips will help your eyes pop (even while wearing a mask).
Maridav / Shutterstock With many states encouraging or requiring the use of face masks in public, it can feel difficult to be seen and stand out from the crowd.
As cloth covers the lower part of one’s face, the upper area — especially the eyes — presents the perfect real estate for your personality, originality and flair to peak through.
Utilizing eye makeup, accessories, and skin hacks while wearing a face mask can help enhance your eyes and make them look larger for a more striking look.
Even without makeup, there are many ways to play up your eyes that you may not have thought of before. Mask, or no mask, the makeup tips below can help make your eyes pop, whether your on a video call, meeting a friend at an outdoor cafe or just want to look your best for yourself.
How To Make Your Eyes Look Bigger With Makeup
1. Use magnetic eyelashes and eyeliner.
Fans of traditional false lashes might want to trade in their lash glue and sticky application for their modern counterpart. Magnetic eyelashes and eyeliner make opening up your eyes for a bigger not only easier, but practically fool-proof.
How to apply magnetic eyeliner and eyelashes:
1. To apply magnetic liner and lashes, like these from Lola’s Lashes, you first apply the eyeliner as you normally would, swept across the upper lash line into a thin, thick, or cat-eye shape of any sort.
2. Then, because of its magnetic properties, users can simply place the magnetic lash strip onto their freshly dried liner.
Lashes like Lola’s come in a variety of styles, allowing for even more room for you to get creative with your lashes, rom wispy and long, to dramatic and voluminous.
Whichever style you chose, this lash trick can make your eyes look bigger.
2. Brighten up your dark circles with illuminating cream and/or concealor.
One way to nearly guarantee the appearance of larger eyes is to brighten up dark circles and under-eye bags. Shadows are known to make the eyes look more sunken and tired, so alleviating this with illuminating creams and/or concealers can help to lift and lighten.
These products will be your new go-to. Adding highlights or shimmer to the inner corners of one’s eyes can add some great brightness. Light-colored powders, like a typical highlight or iridescent shadow, are perfect for this application.
When popped into the very inner corner of the eyes (near the tear ducts) via a small powder brush or humble finger dab, this highlight can make your eyes appear wider and negate those pesky circles, combating discoloration and providing a light base to make your dark lashes stand out.
Remember to choose concealer in a shade that is slightly lighter than that of your foundation for maximum brightness, color correction and lash contrast.
3. Brighten up your eyes' waterlines with white or cream eyeliner.
Brightening the waterline of your eyes (the line of skin between your lower eyelash and your eye) can make a major difference in putting your eyes on display in a way that's similar to using highlighter to brighten your eyes and reduce the appearance of dark circles.
While darker liners in the brown and black family can sometimes close off the eyes, lighter liners in the white and cream family applied carefully to the waterline can open them up significantly.
Concealing potential waterline redness — especially as the seasons change and allergies flare — can serve to not only make your eyes look less irritated, but larger and more brilliant.
4. Apply a small dot of highlighter at the inner corner of each eye.
Applying just a dot of highlighter at the inner corner of each eye is a great way to open them up for better viewing — and tons of compliments!
5. Try winging your eyeliner.
Winged eyeliner is a go-to classic for adding interest to the eyes, and for good reason. Extending fine lines out past the edge of your lashes and connecting them all the way around makes eyes appear bigger and wider.
To create a classic wing (or cat's eye) look, extend the line out past the edge of the eye by just a touch, creating a fine point at the end to add length and dimension.
It’s best to move swiftly but accurately when applying liner; too much liner or liner that’s too thick and heavy-looking can have an opposite and undesirable effect.
For the best results, try using a precision liner with a felt tip like the liner that comes with Lola’s Flick & Stick liner and false lashes kit.
Use code: TANGO30 for 30% off your order
6. Highlight your lower lids.
Highlighting the lids is one of the quickest and easiest ways to make your eyes look bigger with just a touch of eyeshadow.
Like highlighting the inner corners of the eyes, highlighting your lower lids can also have an enlarging effect, while contouring the upper lids with a slightly darker shade than your foundation results in a pleasing shape and added dimension that's more interesting to look at.
Simply sweep the shade along the crease of the eyelid to reach the desired effect.
How To Make Your Eyes Look Bigger Without Makeup
1. Use false eyelashes.
If you’re not sure how to do your eye makeup, false eyelashes can act as a happy medium.
Instead of going through the hassle of curling your lashes and applying mascara, false lashes can simply be glued or used with a clear adhesive strip on the lids.
False eyelashes come in a variety of different styles and lengths to achieve different goals — dense for volume, long for flashy length, etc.
Lola’s Lashes offers a range of these different lashes, from their popular Diamond Strip eyelashes to their Jade Strip eyelashes.
Use code: TANGO30 for 30% off your order.
2. Shape your eyebrows.
Shaping the eyebrows is surprisingly an easy, impactful way to frame and make your eyes look bigger in pictures and in person. Eyebrows that have been groomed and sport a subtle arch create a flattering shape.
Simply remove stray hairs using tweezers, focussing mostly on cleaning up the areas directly above and below the brows to create a strong shape.
Eyebrows can also be shaped easily via waxing or microblading as well, but that should probably be done by a professional.
3. Control eye puffiness.
While puffiness technically means your eyes are bigger, the swelling — especially under the eyes — can make them appear significantly smaller. Luckily, it’s easy to reduce said puffiness.
Using ice cubes, cold spoons and/or cooled jade rollers as cold compresses against the eyes can quickly diminish puffiness and any redness.
Removing this inflammation will make your eyes look much larger and reduce further irritation.
4. Curl your natural eyelashes.
One of the easiest ways to make the eyes appear larger is with a simple eyelash curler. Curled lashes help open the eyes up, create considerable volume and add flare to small-seeming eyes.
Eyelash curlers like Lola’s are basically the perfect tool for making lashes appear fuller and larger by turning the hairs upward and finessing length.
Use code: TANGO30 for 30% off your order.
Curling one’s lashes also makes eyes appear wider because it gives your whole eye area an instant lift while reducing shadows.
Even a slight curl can make your eyes look bigger without makeup.
To sum it up
Working with or without makeup, you can enhance your eyes in order to look and feel pretty even from behind a face mask.
Whether it's de-puffing, concealer or liner and lashes, the simplest of tricks makes all the difference when it comes to playing up your natural features and making your eyes pop.
FAQs
How can makeup make your eyes look bigger?
Makeup like black eyeliner, white eyeliner, mascara, and eyeshadow can help make your eyes look bigger by affecting the shape of the eye.
Makeup can also help you contour and bounce light off of certain areas of the face to make your eyes look bigger.
How do I apply eyeliner to make my eyes look bigger?
Applying winged eyeliner to the top lids and white or beige eyeliner to the bottom waterline can help make eyes look bigger.
How do you make small eyes look bigger naturally?
Without using makeup, you can try using false eyelashes and an eyelash curler to enhance your eyes.
Also consider putting a cold spoon or ice on the skin under your eyes to reduce puffiness, which can make eyes look smaller.
How do I make my eyes look bigger without makeup?
Fake lashes, under-eye creams, eyelash curling, and getting rid of under eye puffiness will all be helpful.
How to make your eyes look bigger with mascara?
Look for lengthening mascara and always use an eyelash curler to take things up a notch.
If you’re using false lashes or magnetic eyelashes, you can apply mascara to them too.
How to make your eyes look bigger with black eyeliner?
Black eyeliner works great on the top lids, especially when winged. Using black eyeliner on the bottom, inner lids can actually make eyes look smaller.
Shannon Ullman is a writer who focuses on love and relationships, beauty, health and wellness, and shopping. Her writing has also appeared on HuffPost, PopSugar, Yahoo and MSN.
-Created in partnership with Lola's Cosmetics