Who likes a nice bright-eyed look…as in a non-zombie/I still haven’t caught up on my sleep look? MEEEE! I have learned many tricks over the years – in and outside of being a makeup artist. This trick, though, takes the cake. People are always absolutely amazed when I tell them what I use to get this brightened look. Simple: WHITE EYELINER. Yep – that’s right.

I, personally, like to use an old fashioned white eyeliner pencil for this. I like how it goes on and it’s super blendable. Sometimes when you use a gel-based liner, it stays right where you put it and can leave a line behind. My favorite pencil liners are Lancôme Le Crayon Khôl. They last forever, stay on all day, and are easy to apply.

So, how do I use the liner? First, you want to apply your makeup as normal: fill in your brows, eye shadows, liner, and mascara. The brightening trick should be one of the last things you do. You do NOT want to apply the white liner first, only to cover it up with other product.

As you can see from the photo, you want to line your brow bone with the white liner. I use a rather thick line so that I have more product to blend down. You will also see the white liner in two more places: the inner rim of my lower lash line and the inside corner of my eye (closest to my nose). So the photo above is what it looks like BEFORE you blend. I would say to apply a fair amount. But don’t get too crazy. The trick is to brighten subtly…we don’t want to look like we actually have white liner on our faces.

TIP: always, always, always make sure the tip of your liner is clean. I just use a little cotton pad with some rubbing alcohol. You can never be too safe around your eyes.

The next step is to blend the white liner.

It is sort of a ‘shading’ technique. You don’t want to rub your skin so much that it pulls the product off. You just want to lightly blend downwards…towards your eyelid. Imagine just taking your ring finger and blending the harsh line away.

You will not blend the liner on your inside bottom lash line. That will stay put.

However, you will want to blend the liner on the inside corner of your eye. Just ‘push’ the liner into the rest of your makeup. You don’t necessarily want to rub it in; that may smear your eyeliner and eye shadow.

You really are just blending the harshness of the white lines into the rest of your face.

This is what it will look like when you’re finished:

It is difficult to see from a simple photo, but try one eye and look in the mirror. I promise you will notice a difference.

Such an easy trick to brighten your whole face!