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Women go through a level of maturity and growth with their make-up application strategies over the years. We start off applying a little lip gloss as tweens and then learn how to apply a natural look in our teen years.

As women, we’ve graduated into darker eye shadows and bolder lipstick colors. But as age increases, the application we used in our twenties could have the ability to make us look aged far beyond our years, so learning how to rediscover and use new makeup strategies is a must.

Start With a Good Skincare Regimen

As with makeup when you’re over 40, less is more when it comes to the skincare route. You don’t want to use the harshest or strongest products on your skin that can becoming thinner and more sensitive as time goes on.You do want to use skincare as a foundation for great looking makeup, though. When we age, our skin tends to dry out more and can start to sag and wrinkle more – and dead skin cells can make it look more aged.

Start with a gentle cleanser that can be used in the morning and in the evening before bed. You should wash your makeup off every night so that you are getting rid of the toxins on your face so that your cells can work to help you retain a more youthful appearance. Some women use face wipes specifically designed to get the makeup off and this is fine if they don’t contain alcohol in them to dry your skin out.

Every morning you also want to moisturize your skin and make sure that it has a built in sunscreen. The sun can dry your skin out and increase wrinkles – not to mention it increases your chances of having skin cancer. Choose a daytime moisturizer that’s light and works well under your makeup.

Put on an eye cream that works specifically for that area of your face – it isn’t as thick and won’t clump up under your eyes, making them look tired. Eye creams can also diminish the dark circles under the eyes. They have both day and night eye creams that you can use.

At night, use a thicker moisturizer that helps hydrate your skin and keep it plump. You might even want to use a hydrating mask once in awhile to help keep the skin smooth.

As we are getting older taking care of our skin is very important and by making a few changes to your routine, you’ll notice a marked improvement in how your makeup appears.

Use the Right Foundation and Concealer

When you get older, you may really start noticing changes around your eye area – as well as with uneven skin tone all over your face. Where Concealer used to only be for nights when you stayed up too late it now may need to be an everyday routine.

Your eye area is thin and fragile to begin with, but more so the older we get. It can start to have a dark appearance and you may need a lightening agent to help brighten up your appearance.

The thick, cake-like concealer sticks that you find in drugstores usually won’t be a good choice anymore because they pool up and show the fine lines and wrinkles under your eye area, having the opposite result from what you hoped it would have.

You may need a lighter approach. Choose a liquid or cream concealer that has eye brightening ingredients in it. This will help reduce the transparency of the skin below your eyes so that dark circles are less visible.

As for foundation many of them contain an SPF in them for sun protection, and they also include time-release moisturizers, too. Look for these as this can help your skin stay hydrated during the day so that it doesn’t look dry and tired by the time you’re heading home from work.

What about using powders as we age?

Powder may not be a good idea for all women over forty. If you have oily skin that needs to have some powder to keep the shine down, then that’s okay, but if you tend to have drier skin you may want to re-think it.

Powder in most cases will just serve to cake up on your face over your foundation and make you appear older and more wrinkled than you really are. Even the lightest powder can have this effect on some women.

You might be able to powder lightly only on problem areas, rather than use an all over facial approach, where it might clump up in the wrinkles around your eyes and mouth.

There are some powders that are specifically made as anti-aging makeup solution products that reduce the appearance of fine lines, offer UV ray protection, and help smooth out the look of your skin without being heavy and clumping.

You don’t want to cover up the reflection of the light in the room that makes you look beautiful – and that’s what powder does, so if possible, it’s best to avoid it altogether.

If you find it hard to go without powder, consider blotting tissues that you can carry in our purse to soak up any oil residue that’s left on your face whenever you’re more active.

New Ways to Apply Your Eyeliner

When you were younger, you might have chosen bold, even harsh eyeliner colors and application methods. You grew up seeing bold looks in women’s magazines, especially at night – you wanted your eyes to stand out.

Part of how we did that as younger women was to choose dark eye liners, line completely around our eyes, top and bottom, and possibly line inside the eye lid on the lower lash set.

Now, you need to brighten and open up your eyes. That means lining with softer colors and only lining the top lashes, toward the outer area, not right down into the eye lid where it gets close to the bridge of your nose.

When you put the liner under your eyes, it actually draws attention to the dark circles you have there – so if that’s an issue for you, there’s another reason to avoid the under eyeliner.

Use a pencil liner in a lighter shade and then smudge it in to make it look more natural and soft.

Pick the Right Eye Shadow Color

The best thing you can do is go with neutral colors – peach, pink and soft browns. If you want to use darker colors then use the lighter side of those tones.
You can make your eye pop by making them look soft, smooth and radiant. This is done by applying the shades correctly over a hydrating eye cream. If your eyes are dry on the lid, then the shadow won’t go on right.

Color and Positioning of Your Blush

Some women don’t know what to do regarding blush when they begin to show signs of aging on their face, so they skip it altogether. This is a mistake. The blush, when used the right way, can help you achieve that youthful, rosy glow.

The key is to put it on correctly. Some older women cake it on, trying to falsely make their skin appear plump and flushed in one area. You want to have a slightly flushed appearance.

That means you don’t want to draw a stark line of blush across your cheekbones. This heightens the hollowing, frail look and makes you look older than you really are.

You also don’t want to put a big fat dollop of blush right on the apples of your cheeks. That looks bad, too. Instead, you want to use a large brush and gentle and lightly color the cheek area toward your temples with circular strokes, not a line.

There are different types of blush you can buy. You can choose powders or creams. If you use a cream (or gel) blush, make sure you use it lightly and work your way up to a look you’re trying to achieve. That’s better than clumping on too much blush and trying to get rid of some of it afterwards.

Many older women like the look of the cream blush because it helps maintain that dewy appearance – just like their foundation does
As for the color, you can choose this in different ways. Some people like the natural blush look. You’ll find this by going outside when it’s cold or putting cold water on your face.

Others like to match their blush to their lipstick, so if it’s peach lipstick, it will be peach blusher as well. You don’t want anything too dark and harsh because it will age you.

Lining and Coloring Your Lips

As we get older we don’t have to shy away from using a deeper, darker color lip shade as one may think, however it is better to stick in the peach, pink, and coral family as this will give your lips a more dewy appearance. Do the same with your lip liners, too.

Some makeup artists don’t even use lip liners – they use highlighter pencils around the lips, rubbed smooth – and then the application of lip color. You still get the flawless straight lines, but your color won’t bleed into the crevices lurking around your lips.

That’s known as feathering, and you may have seen some women with this problem – maybe even yourself! Your lip liner looks flawless when you first put it on, but then it leaks into the fine lines and eventually looks jagged instead of smooth.

Try to choose a lip liner that is as close to the color of your lips as possible. This should never be a harsh, dry stick but a smooth and creamy one that help moisturize your lip area so that lipstick won’t flood into those spaces to try to hydrate them.

Don’t feel distraught over the fact that your skincare regimen and your makeup application may have to change. Embrace it and try new things. The bottom line is for you to feel good about yourself what-ever you are wearing.