Beauty Brands: Experts Recommend Makeup For Mature Women

While there’s no age limit as to whether you should use makeup to enhance or alter your appearance, there may come a time when you question whether wearing makeup is right for you. Whether it’s due to skin changes, lifestyle changes, or just not giving a damn anymore about what others expect you to look like, wearing makeup is a very personal decision. Especially in this day and age, when pictures of flawless faces and unattainable beauty images are rampant, determining that you won’t wear makeup is almost a courageous stance. As writer Zoya Patel recently wrote in The Guardian, “When we can no longer conform to the increasingly unattainable beauty standards, perhaps a freedom to be ourselves can emerge. Age provides a wonderful, and inevitable, opportunity to embrace this shift, if only we stop trying to surgically forestall its effects.” So, for many of us, the decision to put down our beauty brushes and make peace with our natural faces is a liberating shift.

Yet, for many older women, makeup still provides a sense of fun and an opportunity to be creative. The challenge is how to find products and options that are suitable for variations in skin tones and textures, hair color changes, and lines and wrinkles that all too frequently get emphasized by whatever you attempt to put on your face. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of professional experts and social media gurus ready to give advice about products, potions, and strategies for achieving the best version of you. So we’ve rounded up some of the latest recommendations ready for placement on your bathroom counter or in your medicine cabinet.

When it comes to strategies for makeup application for older women, several social media makeup experts offer advice geared toward older women. So, for example, there is Angie Schmitt, who founded the website Hot and Flashy. She reviews and suggests products and applications for mature skin types, including both drugstore and more expensive options. With more than a million subscribers to her YouTube channel, she’s clearly got a following and an expertise that you may find of interest. Another social media makeup maven is Dominique Sasche. She, too, has more than a million subscribers on YouTube, and her specialty is demonstrating makeup techniques that can give you a “lift” without a surgical intervention. 

There’s plenty of makeup application advice from more mainstream outlets as well. For example, The New York Times Style magazine has run a series of articles about makeup applications for older women, including creating a “no-makeup” look using certain products (with the philosophy of not looking at your face as a series of problems to be solved but rather subtle enhancements of your natural look). The Times has also published an article on makeup application tips for mature skin, with an emphasis on hydrating products, a light touch with foundations and concealers, and even a suggestion about false eyelashes, termed “the high heels” of our eyes!

Speaking of makeup application, for those who struggle with weak or shaky hands, makeup products and containers can be a nightmare. If you can’t open your blush or hold your mascara wand steady, your makeup aspirations are likely to go sideways. Fortunately, as recently featured in a Wall Street Journal article, brands are beginning to offer more ergonomic and easy-to-use packaging and applicators. For an example of one company offering innovative and easy-to-use products, clear your counter and click here.

And for some advice on the best makeup offerings suitable for the skin of older women, consider the following recommendations:

-11 Best Beauty Brands for Women Over 40 offered by the website The Flow Space  

-10 Best Makeup Products for Mature Skin, According to Our 50-Something Tester from Glamour

-CNN suggests makeup you can’t live without, from a writer over 50 who’s forgone Botox

While many of these recommendations cover a range of prices and categories, in this day and age, it’s also valuable to understand what drugstore options can compete with the expensive beauty counter products. So start counting your pennies and take a look at The Wirecutter’s recommendations for Best Drugstore Makeup Products here.