How To Find The Right Brow Shape For Your Face

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Doing your eyebrows may not feel like the most creative or exciting step in your beauty routine, but those arches can have a big impact on your overall look. Just consider a few celebs who look totally different with eyebrow makeup. And it's not always a simple matter of filling in gaps and tweezing runaway hairs — managing the very shape of your brows can help balance your face shape and highlight your best features.

To learn more, Glam spoke exclusively to makeup artist Caroline Hernandez. As shown in her Instagram portfolio, Hernandez knows all about perfecting individual features to complete a look — including a little tasteful brow shaping. "Brow shapes can play a big part in balancing the face shape," Hernandez tells Glam. However, she also acknowledges that they can be a source of confusion in everyday styling. "Brow shapes and colors can be one of those things that you don't consider changing, or they leave you baffled as to what to do to suit you best." Hernandez adds that it can get even more frustrating if your natural brows feel out of sync with your look, whether due to "over-plucking in the past, a change of hair color, or even due to hair loss."

But that's no reason to skimp on attention to your eyebrows. Hernandez assures us, "There are a few simple rules that can really help you out here, and these solutions can really be quite simple." First and foremost, you need to know what you're aiming for — namely, what brow shape should you be chasing to enhance your face's inherent beauty? Hernandez explains that some features will benefit from a more arched brow, while others should keep things flat and understated.

To curate more flattering brows, stylist Caroline Hernandez says your first step should always be determining your face shape once and for all. After all, the proportion of your features will dictate which brow style suits you best. Once you have that figured out, your perfect brows become a matter of balance.

For example, Hernandez reveals that "a flatter shaped brow on a long face will give the illusion the face is shorter, as it isn't adding height to the brow area. In complete contrast to this, a round face with an arched, lifted, angled brow will lengthen the face." The same principle holds true for face shapes that can be long or short, such as heart-shaped faces. "A high arch on a small heart-shaped face will add length and a slightly lower arch will shorten a long heart-shaped face," Hernandez exclusively tells Glam.

Brow thickness and length can also play a role in balancing your features. "A thicker, stronger brow with a good, defined arch will add balance to a square face," Hernandez suggests. "If you feel like your face is wide, perhaps a diamond-shaped face, try a soft, rounded, and shorter brow. Don't lengthen the tip of the brow — this will pull focus in and give the illusion of the face being a little less wide."

Perhaps the most adaptable face shape is a true oval face. "Oval faces tend to be able to pull off a variant of brow shapes," says Hernandez. Coincidentally, they're also very versatile for hairstyling — if you're trying to figure out how to part your hair based on your face shape, oval faces can get away with almost anything. Still, there are best-of-the-best options. As Hernandez suggests for brows, "The ideal brow shape would be to have softer and shallow arches."

So you've determined your face shape and a complementary eyebrow style. Now it's time to implement the look. "To manipulate the brow shape, you are going to take your brush and your brow powder — such as Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Powder Duo — and look at where and how you want your brows to be shaped," says stylist Caroline Hernandez.

For a more pronounced arch, her top tip is to "find the highest part of your brow, and ... strengthen the top part of the brow, exaggerating the height of the brow. This will instantly give you a brow lift." Not only is this good for short or round faces, but it can be refreshing on aging features. As Hernandez explains exclusively to Glam, "It's going to feel more youthful on an older face and give the impression of the brow being slightly higher — more like it may have been before gravity stepped in and changed them."

To flatten or weigh down your brows — say, if you have a longer face — Hernandez recommends, "Start at the inner corner (nearest the center of your face) and shade from underneath. This will strengthen the brow there, pulling it slightly down." She says you can also combine these two techniques, shading beneath the brow and amplifying the arch, to create a classic, all-purpose swoop. If need be, Hernandez suggests going in with NYX's Lift and Snatch! Brow Tint Pen "after the powder brow to create hair texture when there is none naturally."

Pro tip: While you can get pretty far with a single brow shade, Hernandez notes that combining multiple hues will help give your brows depth. "The reason I love the Anastasia Powder Duos is because of the two colors. I like to use the lighter color at the inner corner, and the deeper color at the top of the arch," she reveals. And this isn't just limited to powder products — using two different brow pencil shades can also benefit your look.