Doing Your Own Makeup for a Big Night, Step by Step

Do it in one pass, in order, in good light, and give yourself an hour. The order is eyes first, then skin, then everything else, and it is the single change that turns a fiddly two hour job into a calm one. Almost every mess you have ever had to fix was caused by doing your base and then dropping shadow all over it.

You do not need to be good at this. You need a sequence, a decent light and enough time that you are not doing your liner while somebody shouts up the stairs at you.

Set Yourself Up First

Sit down at a table with a mirror propped up in front of you, rather than standing at a bathroom mirror. Your arms get tired and tired arms shake.

Get the light in front of you, not above you. Overhead bathroom lighting throws shadows exactly where you are trying to see, which is how people end up with a jawline. If you can do it near a window in daylight, do that, and check the result once under a lamp before you go. That matters for a daytime start like Dreamworx, where you do your face in daylight and see it later under club lighting.

What It Costs

Products are the smaller half of this. Tools are what change the result, and you can get sorted for somewhere around twenty to thirty pounds in a high street chemist.

• A damp sponge and one flat brush for base. The sponge does the blending, your fingers do the warming up.
• A small fluffy blending brush for the eye socket. If you buy one brush in your life, buy this one.
• A gripping primer so the rest of it stays where you put it.

Everything else can wait. Big sets of brushes are mostly duplicates, and a twelve piece kit will not make you better at blending than one brush you know how to use.

Step One: Skin, Then Wait

Cleanse, moisturise, and then genuinely leave it for five minutes while you do something else. Makeup put onto damp skin lifts straight back off.

Do your lip balm now too, at the start, so it has soaked in by the time you get to your mouth rather than sitting on top of it.

Step Two: Eyes, Before Anything Else

This is the bit people do last and it is why they end up patching. Shadow drops. Glitter drops. Mascara flicks. Do it all before your base exists and any mess wipes off bare skin in one go.

Work in three moves. Something mid-tone through the socket line first, blended in small circles until you cannot see where it stops. Something darker pressed into the outer corner and along the lash line. Something light on the lid and under the brow bone. That shape works on everyone.

Liner after shadow, mascara last. If you are wearing lashes, put them on after your base rather than now, because the glue needs somewhere clean to sit.

Step Three: Base, in Thin Layers

Primer where your face moves, which is the middle of the face, around the nose and the chin. Then foundation in a thin layer everywhere and a second thin layer only where you want more.

Use a damp sponge and press rather than wipe. Wiping moves product around, pressing pushes it in. Then concealer after foundation rather than before, because you will find you need much less of it.

Powder only the T-zone and anywhere you know goes shiny. Powder on the cheeks is what makes a face look flat and tired in photographs.

Step Four: The Colour That Makes You Look Awake

Blush first and more than you think, up on the cheek and slightly towards the temple. A face with a properly done base and no blush reads as ill under club lighting.

Then bronzer or a warm shade where the sun would hit you, and a highlight on the top of the cheekbone only. Cream products go before powder, always. Cream over powder drags and patches.

Step Five: Lips, and Stop

Line the whole lip rather than just the edge, fill it in, and put your colour over the top. Blot on a tissue, then go over it once more. That second pass is the difference between lipstick that lasts a Dreamworx afternoon and lipstick you are checking all day.

Then setting spray, four or five spritzes at arm's length, and let it dry without touching anything.

The Timings

• Ten minutes: skincare, then leave it.
• Twenty minutes: eyes, unhurried, because this is the part that rewards patience.
• Fifteen minutes: base and colour.
• Five minutes: lips, spray, done.

If something has gone wrong, fix it with a cotton bud and a bit of micellar water rather than starting again. And when it is finished, put your hands down. The most common way a good face gets ruined is the person wearing it checking on it.