Does makeup make you look younger?
Most people assume makeup always takes years off. A controlled experiment found something more interesting: it depends on how old you are. For women in their forties and fifties, makeup made them look younger; at thirty it made no difference; at twenty it made them look older. Here's why.
What makeup changes in a face
Makeup does three things that faces lose with age: it evens out the skin, it makes eyes, lips and brows look bigger, and it increases facial contrast, the difference in colour and lightness between the features and the surrounding skin. In a large sample of women, aspects of facial contrast went down with age, and faces looked younger when that contrast was digitally increased and older when it was reduced (Porcheron, Mauger and Russell, 2013).
The experiment: same women, with and without makeup
Researchers photographed women of different ages with and without makeup under carefully controlled conditions and asked people to guess their age. Women of 40 and especially 50 looked significantly younger with makeup. Women of 30 looked the same either way, and 20-year-olds looked older with makeup. Two more studies replicated the pattern (Russell and colleagues, 2018).
Why makeup can make young women look older
In a final study, the same team found that people associate wearing makeup with adulthood. So on a face that isn't clearly adult, makeup nudges the guess upwards. In other words, makeup works on two levels: what it does to the face itself, and what it makes people assume about the person wearing it.
Even skin tone matters
A smaller study with Korean women found that uneven skin colour, especially uneven yellowish tones, went with an older perceived age, and that wearing foundation lowered the age evaluators gave (Lee, Han and Kim, 2018). It's one more reason why a more even complexion reads younger, with or without makeup.
What it means for your photo
If you're in your twenties and want to look your age or younger, a light, natural look or no makeup at all is usually the safest choice. From your forties on, evening out the skin and defining eyes, brows and lips works with the cues people use to judge age. Whatever you choose, good light matters more than any product: see how to look younger in photos and how to guess someone's age.
Want to know what your makeup does to the number? On AgeDart strangers guess your age from a selfie; share your own link with friends and compare a photo with and without makeup. Start with how old do I look?
Put your eye to the test
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