Getting Ready for Daytime Clubbing: A Two-Hour Timeline
Hair first, face last, and twenty minutes spare at the end is the order that gets you out on time.
Two hours is plenty, as long as you do it in the right order: hair while the bathroom is still warm, skincare next, makeup last, and twenty minutes doing nothing at the end. Work backwards from the time you leave the house, not the time you want to arrive.
Daytime clubbing catches people out because you are doing a full evening face in the middle of the afternoon, usually on top of a morning that already had a shop and a school run in it. Dreamworx starts in the afternoon, so the getting ready lands in the middle of your day rather than at the end of it. A timeline is not fussiness. It stops you doing the fiddly bits in a hurry, which is exactly where a good face falls apart.
Start From When You Leave
Pick your leaving time first and write it down. Then add fifteen minutes for the things that always happen: a shoe change, a bag swap, someone needing something.
If you are meeting people beforehand, that is your leaving time, not the start time. Most of the getting ready panic you have ever had came from working back from the wrong number.
What You'll Spend
Getting ready at home costs you almost nothing if you already own the basics, and that is the honest answer. The things worth spending on are the ones that save you time on the day rather than the ones that promise a new face.
- Dry shampoo and a decent hairspray. Between them, under a tenner in most high street chemists, and they do more for a six-hour hairstyle than anything else on the shelf.
- Blotting papers. A pound or two, and they mean you are not carrying a powder compact you will over-apply.
- A blow-dry at a salon if you would rather not do your own. Prices vary a lot locally, so ring two places near you and ask.
Everything else in this timeline is time, not money. If you buy nothing, you can still run the whole thing.
Two Hours To Go: Shower And Hair
Shower now, not later. Makeup applied in a steamy bathroom slides off by teatime, and hair needs the longest to settle.
If you are washing your hair, do it now so it has time to dry properly and drop out of the just-done stage. If you are not washing it, this is when the dry shampoo goes in, at the roots, and gets left alone for a few minutes before you touch it.
Rough dry, then style. A style that looks slightly too neat now will look right in three hours.
Ninety Minutes To Go: Skincare, Then Leave It
Cleanse, moisturise, and then genuinely walk away for at least five minutes. Foundation on damp skin lifts off with the moisture, and that is most of the difference between a base that lasts and one that goes patchy.
Use this gap to get dressed, or at least to put on everything that goes over your head. Pulling a top on after your face is done is how mascara ends up on a collar.
An Hour To Go: Base And Eyes
This is the block that rewards taking your time, so protect it. Primer where your face moves, foundation in thin layers, powder only where you go shiny.
Eyes next, cream products under powder ones. If you are doing anything ambitious with liner, you want this hour rather than the last twenty minutes, because a wing you rush is a wing you redo.
Put your bag together while your setting spray dries. It gives you something to do with your hands other than touch your face.
Thirty Minutes To Go: Lips, Shoes, Stop
Lips last, so nothing smudges them. Line the whole lip, colour on top, blot, go again.
Then shoes, coat, bag, and stop. The last half hour is deliberately empty because something always comes up. If nothing does, you get to sit down for ten minutes before you go out, which is a better start to the afternoon than running for a taxi.
If You Only Have An Hour
Cut in this order: skip washing your hair and use dry shampoo, skip the ambitious eye and do liner and mascara only, and keep the base exactly as it is. The base is the bit that has to last six hours, so it is the last thing to rush.
Do not cut the five minutes after moisturiser and do not cut the setting spray. They cost you almost no time and they are doing the heavy lifting.
The One Thing To Get Right
Eat something before you go. An afternoon start at Dreamworx lands right when you would normally be having lunch, and a proper meal beforehand is the difference between still enjoying yourself at seven and flagging at five.
If your timeline works, you should be standing by the door with your coat on, slightly early, wondering what you have forgotten. You have not forgotten anything. That is what finishing early feels like.