Dealing with a hangover the morning after a late night of drinks with your friends is never fun. You not only have to somehow get through a headache that’s gnawing at your skull but also try to hide the obvious signs of a hangover on your face. There’s no way you can head into work with your eyes looking all puffy and red, can you?
So, you’ve drunk all the water you can manage, slapped on the best hydrating face masks you have in your beauty drawer, resisted the temptation of your regular morning cup of coffee, and slathered your face with serums and moisturisers to give your skin the slightest chance of a glow. Next up in the line of defence against your hangover is makeup.
In the first part of this series, we covered the type of base product you should opt for as well as the proper concealing and contouring techniques you should use. Now, let’s move on to other makeup tips to help you finish off the rest of your hangover makeup routine.
Cancel Out Your Red Eyes
Now that you’ve covered up your flushed skin with a lightweight base product and concealer, it’s time to tackle those red eyes. Barring wearing a pair of shades for the entire day in the office, there isn’t that much you can do to completely get rid of the redness in your peepers with makeup, unfortunately.
What you can do, however, is to try and brighten up your eyes as much as possible. While this might not take down the redness, it will at least give your eyes a bit more of a “wide-awake” look, no matter how much of a zombie you’re feeling on the inside. One way to do this is by applying a flesh-coloured eye pencil on the rims of your eyes. Avoid a white eye pencil as this will create too stark a contrast against the redness in your peepers, which might end up accentuating your bloodshot eyes even more.
After lining your waterline, it’s time to move on to your eyelids. Lucky for you, there’s no need for a complicated eyeshadow look to hide the hangover signs on your eyes. You don’t even need eyeshadows to cancel out the redness; all you need in this step is a liquid highlighter. Simply dot these three areas of your eyes — tear duct, centre of your eyelids and brow bone. Blend out the highlighter until it creates a subtle sheen, and voilà! You’ll instantly look more wide awake. One thing you have to make sure of, though, is that your highlighter doesn’t contain any obvious flecks of glitter so your eyes don’t look excessively sparkly.
Brighten Up Your Cheeks
Hungover skin equates to tired-looking skin, so you’ll definitely be needing help in the blush department. Since a hangover will cause your skin to be on the drier side, avoid powder blushes as they won’t be able to adhere well to your skin. Plus, you want to create a natural flush of colour on your cheeks rather than make it obvious that you’ve just swiped some blush on. Therefore, we recommend going with a cream blush that will add both a natural-looking flush as well as glow to your skin.
The shade of blush you go for depends on your skin tone. For fairer skin tones, go with a peach or salmon pink shade. Olive skin tones will benefit from a rose or mauve shade, while dark skin tones will look amazing in bright pink shades such as fuchsia. If possible, choose a blush shade that has a blue undertone too so it will accentuate the brightness of your complexion.
Light Up Your Skin
Now that you’ve added some colour to your complexion, it’s time to give it a bit of strategic highlight. If you read part one of this series and have added a drop of highlighter to your base product, you can choose to skip this part in case you’re worried about your skin looking too shiny.
However, if you think your skin can do with more luminosity, apply a cream or liquid highlighter to the high points of your face. This includes your cheekbones, the bridge of your nose and your Cupid’s bow. You can even put a tiny smidge of highlighter on the inner corners of your eyes to open them up further.
Again, just as how you should avoid powder blush, skip powder highlighters too because they will create too much of an obvious shine on your face. You want a natural, glossy sheen on your skin, which can be easily achieved with a cream or liquid highlighter.
Colour Your Lips
After all that work, you can now finish off your makeup with a swipe of bright-coloured lipstick. You have two options here: you can either apply the cream blush you used on your cheeks on your lips to create a seamless look or simply swipe on a separate lip product in a similar shade. Dab on a bit of clear lip balm on just the centre of your bottom lip and you’re all set for a day in the office.