Brows are an important part of beauty maintenance. As well as framing your face, they can bring out your eyes and enhance your overall appearance.
However, it can be difficult to keep them in check when you’re travelling or in and out of lockdown without immediate access to a salon. Humph.
Lucky for us, Founder of Tweezerfile and brow expert Lucy Zender has all the top tips in terms of how to make a perfect eyebrow shape at home.
Let’s dive right in, shall we?
1. Gather the Necessary Equipment
First things first, you need to have the right tools in front of you so that you can do the best job possible. Lucy suggests the following.
- Tweezers – “If your eyebrows are particularly thick, use straight-tip tweezers. They give a good firm grip, allowing you to grab more hair and remove it faster. If you need precision plucking, opt for some pointed-tip tweezers. Stainless steel is a good material to choose as it’s hypoallergenic to avoid skin irritation. Make sure all your tweezers are sharp to get a much better result more easily.”
- Eyebrow pencils – “Choose good-quality brow pencils but don’t be tempted to spend a fortune.”
- Eyebrow scissors – “If you are planning to trim your eyebrows, get scissors specifically designed for this. They should be thin with sharp blades and, again, choose stainless steel if you can.”
- Eyebrow brush – “If you don’t have one, use a clean mascara brush or even a toothbrush for optimal results.”
2. Prepare Accordingly
To get organised before you start creating the perfect eyebrow shape, Lucy recommends to “pluck your eyebrows after a bath or shower so that your pores are open and your skin softer.”
She continues: “If you don’t have time, hold a warm, damp flannel to your brows for a couple of minutes to achieve a similar effect. Make sure you are relaxed and have everything you need to hand. It’s important not to rush so do it when you have plenty of time.
Most importantly, ensure your mirror is completely clean and fit for the job and that you have good lighting. However, avoid magnifying mirrors and very bright lighting as this can lead to over-plucking.”
3. Determine Your Eyebrow Shape
To pluck your natural line, you need to determine the three vital points of your brows, according to Lucy. Then you can pluck around these markers.
The three vital points are as follows.
- Start – “With your eyebrow pencil, hold it vertically against your ‘nasal wing’ (the fattest part of your nostril). Mark with your other pencil where it meets your eyebrow.”
- Arch – “This is the highest part of your eyebrow and can be determined by holding your pencil against your nasal wing again. But this time, do it at an angle so that it runs past the outer part of your pupil. Where this meets the eyebrow is where you can mark your arch point.”
- End – “With the pencil still on your nasal wing, turn it so that it runs past the outward corner of your eye. Where it touches the brow, mark the end of your eyebrow.”
And it’s as easy as that!
4. Pluck Your Eyebrows
The next step when it comes to how to make a perfect eyebrow shape is plucking.
How do you pluck? Well, Lucy says: “Work from the inside, over to the outside then underneath. In other words, pluck the hairs between your eyebrows, then the hairs above your arch, to properly define it. Next, take out any hairs that are on the outside of your end mark. When you have done this, pluck under your brow. This is where you can determine how thick or thin your brows are.”
Either way, try to keep the plucking underneath consistent in both eyebrows.
According to Lucy, you should avoid doing one eyebrow and then the other. “Instead, do a few hairs on one eyebrow and then even it up on the other side,” she says. “Stop regularly and check that they are coming out even.”
Lucy also claims that you can make your plucking most efficient by stretching your skin tight and plucking from as close to the root as you can get. She explains: “This makes it far less likely that you will break a hair and leave it too short to grab with your tweezers.”
You should also pull the hair in the direction it grows to make it easier to pluck.
5. Deal with Stragglers
Once you’ve learned how to make a perfect eyebrow shape, Lucy says that “you may want to just tidy up long hairs that have a nasty habit of pointing out at odd angles.”
To do this, “take your brow brush and brush your hairs up, then very carefully use your eyebrow scissors to trim them to the right length.”
Simple.
6. Add the Finishing Touches
According to Lucy, the skin around your eyebrows is likely to be inflamed and sore once you have finished shaping them. That’s why it’s a good idea to have a soothing cream to hand.
Lucy recommends buying cortisone cream in the chemist or trying some pure aloe gel.
Once your brows have calmed down, Lucy claims that you can go the extra mile with the following finishing touches.
- “If you still have errant hairs, use a specially-designed transparent gel to smooth them into place and keep them there.
- If you did over-pluck or have small gaps in your eyebrow, use your eyebrow pencil to gently draw some tiny lines to replace the errant hairs.”
And voilà!
7. Care for Your Tweezers
Lastly, don’t make the mistake of throwing your tweezers back into your makeup bag once you’re finished with them.
Why? Well, according to Lucy, they shouldn’t come into contact with makeup residue which will then inevitably come into contact with open hair follicles.
She says: “This can result in infection, which kind of defeats the object of plucking your brows to make you look more presentable!”
She continues: “The other thing that happens is that they are more likely to get the tips blunted and blunt tweezers are not effective. Blunt tweezers tend to bend and break hairs or simply not work at all.” Therefore, when you have finished perfecting your brows, you should do the following:
- Clean your tweezers – “Wipe your tweezers clean after every use.”
- Store them correctly – “Store them either in a special storage pouch or point them up in a pot.”
- Replace the plastic covers – “If your Tweezers came with those little plastic covers on the tips, keep hold of them and replace them after each use to protect them from dust, etc.”
That said, however well you look after your tweezers, they will blunt eventually. In this case, most people simply throw them away and get a new pair.
Alternatively, Lucy recommends looking for a Tweezer file designed specifically for tweezers that’s easy-to-use. This will ensure your tweezers are always in tip-top condition and last for years to come!
That’s where Tweezerfile comes in.
Tweezerfile is anaward-winning and innovative new beauty product that allows you to sharpen your old blunt tweezers and bring them back to life.
To use them, Lucy says that you should hold your tweezers with the blades together and slide the tweezer up and down the Tweezerfile while gently applying equal pressure on the top and bottom blade.
After a few strokes, your tweezers will be back to their old glory, gripping even the shortest hair! Winning.
How to Make a Perfect Eyebrow Shape That’s Sustainable
Just because you might not have access to your favourite salon or therapist, doesn’t mean that your usual beauty regime has to go out of the window.
Like with anything in life, creating the perfect eyebrow shape just takes practise! As long as you have the right equipment and follow the above steps, you can achieve expert-level brows on your own in no time at all.
Katie Davies is the Yorkshire-based freelance writer who founded Trendy Tourist. Since 2017, she has written for over 100 companies on a range of subjects, from fashion to marketing. When she’s not producing content, you can find her shopping, exploring a new place or sitting somewhere having a cup of builder’s tea.
