Let’s talk about contrast makeup. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have already seen the trend blowing up the FYP with a method of applying makeup that takes in your features to work out the most stunning and effortless look for you. Sounds good, right?
What is contrast makeup?
In a nutshell, the concept looks at the contrast between your hair, eyes and skin tone to determine the best approach to doing your makeup. It centres around the idea of keeping everything low contrast and unified so that your whole makeup look works cohesively, versus one feature standing out. Depending on your natural colouring, there are tweaks you can make to keep things looking effortless. The trend was spearheaded by French makeup artist, Alieenor, who has created a series of TikTok videos on finding your contrast and even created a filter to help you work out what your contrast is. You select your skin tone level, then check it against low, medium or high contrast examples to work out your match.
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TikTok content
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Low contrast makeup
If you’re low contrast, it means your features – your skin tone, hair colour and eye colour – are similar in tone, whether they’re all deep, all medium or all fair. “When you have low contrast, you have more harmony on your face. Everything is less harsh, everything seems soft and very ‘the same’ because it’s in the same grey-scale [if you were to look at the image in black and white],” explains Alieenor.
As for how to apply this to getting ready, it means you get to do that no-makeup-makeup look. You have very unified features already. If you do a really intense eye or lip look, that would become the focus of your makeup, which means you don’t see your face as a whole, so it helps if you keep you makeup soft and in-keeping.
Low contrast: light-toned hair, eyes and skin
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Low contrast: medium-toned hair, eyes and skin
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Low contrast: deep-toned hair, eyes and skin
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Medium contrast makeup
If you’re medium contrast, it means your skin colour varies a fair amount from your hair and eye colour. For example, if you’re hair is a shade or two darker than your skin tone or vice versa, “you’re kind of in the middle,” says Alieenor. “Sometimes you have to tweak a little bit of your makeup to harmonise everything and have something that is a little bit less harsh, to appear more ethereal and natural,” she explains.
