For those of you who have light or fair skin (like me), I am sure you are you are aware that contouring and highlighting is very important. If you are quite unsure on how to make your face look younger, slimmer, and perfectly sculpted … then this post is definitely for you.
Before and After of a fair skin model
You can use different products to achieve a perfectly contoured face look. However, it gets quite tricky for light or fair skin complexion. Unless you know the proper way to contour or highlight your face, those products would be rendered useless and the result would be quite dreadful if not funny looking. The main thing you should keep in mind is that when you contour, you’re merely accentuating your natural features.
Your cheekbones, jaw, and nose are the key areas on your face that require contouring. Incidentally, contouring makeup in taupe would be perfect for fair-skinned women. Now how do you go about achieving that sculpted perfection?
Cheekbones
1. Look for the hollow of your cheek, which should be right underneath the cheekbone. You can find it by sucking the insides of your cheeks in.
2. Once you find the hollow lining of your cheek, apply a taupe shadow using an angled medium or large brush.
3. By now, you should have already “receded” the hollow of your cheeks. Balance it out by making your cheekbones standout. You can do this by applying a light shadow along the cheekbones and blending it toward the temples.
Jaw
1. Find the area where you jaw meets your neck and apply a darker shade of shadow on that area along the jaw line.
2. Minimize the line you have created by blending the color down to your neck using a clean brush.
3. Apply a highlighter right on top of your jaw line and blend, making sure to avoid your chin. Remember, you only want to contour the sides of your face.
Nose
1. Start contouring your nose by applying a lowlight shade (pale pink or soft orange perhaps) from the inner corner of your brow down to either side of your nose. You can also take a small brush at the inside corner of your eyes and slowly drag the brush downwards towards the side of your nose.
2. Then, apply a highlighter on the bridge of your nose, preferably one with a matte finish. Keep in mind that the nose or T-zone is most susceptible to oil, and you don’t want it to look too shiny; thus, you need to use a mattefying highlighter.
3. Using a brush, blend the lowlight and highlight shades to finish the look off.
If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to let me know. Until next time! xox
You might be interested to read: ❝ How to Contour and Highlight Dark Skin ❞
Chubskulit Rose
September 4, 2013The illustration looks easier than really doing it, well for me it’s hard as I dunno how lol.
Marms
September 5, 2013I consider myself as fair-skinned. So this make-up technique is applicable.
Peachy @ The Peach Kitchen
September 8, 2013Thanks to your tips I now know how much knowledge about contouring and highlighting can do!
Lindsay N.
October 12, 2013I’m very fair. I’ll be trying this!
Jillian
December 13, 2013What products did you use for contouring? I learned how to contour a face while involved in theater, but I don’t want to use the super heavy stuff 😛
Curlz
December 15, 2013I would have found this tutorial much more useful if you had actually used a pale model… For those of us with super fair skin the problem isn’t knowing where to put the product (there’s a million tutorials for that) but actually doing it on skin that already uses the lightest shade of foundation! Not snarking on your beautiful model… but if you’re going to claim a tutorial is for people with very light skintones you might want to check that it is actually targeted towards very light skintones, not just a basic white person. This girl is easily five shades away from qualifying as pale.
Mathilde
December 23, 2013Great tutorial! What products would you recommend?
Maxine
December 29, 2013Looks very natural! Which highlighter did you use?
Hallie
April 19, 2014The model you are using doesn’t look pale at all to me, so this isn’t very helpful.
Hallie
April 19, 2014If she’s pale, then I need to start looking for my real father..Casper the friendly ghost.
Adrienne
December 16, 2014the model really does look great after the contouring, but she’s not pale. I already use the whitest tones I can get for my snow white skin so this isn’t too helpful for telling me how to contour when I have no glowing tan like the model