For many beauty lovers, highlighter is a staple in their makeup routine alongside foundation, blush and mascara. We recently learned that we’ve applying blush the wrong way for our entire makeup-using lives, so colour us shocked when we realised that the way you use highlighter depends on your face shape.
Applying your highlighter to certain spots on your face, while taking the shape of your face into consideration, helps to further enhance your features. Basically, you want to add highlighter anywhere you want to draw attention to, which depending on your face shape, slightly differs from person to person. Here’s how to do it.
Round
For those with round face shapes, you’re probably wanting to create a little definition which is where contouring comes into play. After contouring your face (should you want to), Iconic London recommends applying highlighter under your eyes in an upside triangle shape and in the middle of your forehead and chin, which helps widen the look of these.
Heart
Heart-shaped faces have a narrow chin and a wide forehead, so you can create more dimension. You can repeat the same instructions as those given for round faced people, while also adding some highlight to your upper jawline to balance out the chin and forehead.
Oval
Oval face shapes don’t tend to have any sharp angles but usually have quite a balanced face, so instead of creating dimension in the face, MindBodyGreen recommends sweeping highlighter across the top of the cheekbones, along the cupid’s brow and along the brow bone.
Square
Square face shapes usually have quite naturally defined features so you simply want to enhance these. Focusing your highlighter application to the middle of the chin and forehead will help create some balance in the face. MindBodyGreen recommends blending super well if you’d like to soften out some of the sharpness of these angles.
Diamond
With diamond face shapes, the cheeks are the widest part of the face, while the chin and forehead are slightly narrow. Jane Iredale recommends highlighting your temples and jawline to create some balance.
