6-Step Glowy Summer Makeup Look for Mature Skin – Easy & Quick Guide

Beauty Thought Leader: Elise Marquam-Jahns

When the summer heat sets in, our makeup routine definitely needs a seasonal shift.

Quick & Easy 6-Step Glowy Summer Look:

So summer is the perfect time to embrace a quick and easy glowy makeup look which looks especially beautiful on our mature skin. And the six steps we can use to create that easy, glowy makeup look is exactly what we’ll be focusing on today.  

Easier Eye Look:

Step 1 is to create an easier—but still lovely—eye look. We can do this by lightening our brows and simplifying our eye makeup in order to create a softer more natural look. But since many of us do have to deal with sparser brows but still want our brows to beautifully frame our eyes, a product with built in filbers– like Elf’s Wow Brow— is a great summer option.

Elf’s Wow Brow is a buildable fiber-infused brow gel that makes our brows look fuller. The built-in hair-like fibers adhere to—and enhance–our brows so they appear fuller. It comes in four colors: neutral brown and dark brown which I use, taupe which is the lightest shade and brunette which is a red brown shade.

I also add a slight bit of Maybelline’s Brow Fast Sculpt gel to really make sure those grey and white brow hairs are covered.  

Cover The Veins:

Now for Step 2, our eyes. I’ve already applied Makeup by Mario’s Master Eye Prep and Set primer to cover up the veins showing through my lid area and the discoloration on my eyelids. I love this product because it creates an even color across my eyelids just as paint primer does when we paint the walls in our house. 

“A powder bronzer is so easy to just sweep across the crease area.”

The two eye products I’m going to use today will make my eye makeup routine much quicker and easier. I’ll be using a powder and an eyeshadow stick. The bronzer I’ll be using is Benefit’s cult classic Hoola bronzer and the eyeshadow stick is Colourpop’s shadow stick in the shade “Juicy Gossip” which is a beautifully shimmery pink.

A powder bronzer is so easy to just sweep across the crease area and that sweep of product provides just enough definition to highlight our eyes. And this very creamy shadow stick really glides easily across the eyelids and it’s a lovely, soft shimmery color. When we get to blush, I’ll be adding one other quick component to this eye look.

Create Focal Point:

Now we’ll turn our attention to the rest of our face for step three and create the focal point of this summer makeup look which is a gorgeous glow. In order to create a beautiful glow with our makeup products, it’s very important to use the right type of moisturizer under our face products.

If we use a heavy or thick moisturizer, the products we apply on top of it will literally absorb into the moisturizer which will prevent us from creating that lovely glow we want to create. 

One of the best ways to create glow is by applying a glowy face primer and there are three ways to do it. We can apply a glowy face primer first and then even out our skin tone with a tinted moisturizer, foundation or concealer; we can mix a glowy primer with our foundation, or we can apply the glowy primer over our foundation.

“One of the best ways to create glow is by applying a glowy face primer and there are three ways to do it.“

Glowy Foundation:

And of course another option is to simply use a glowy foundation by itself. But in the summer, using a face primer is an especially good idea since it does help our makeup last longer in the heat of summer. And of course a setting spray at the end of a summer makeup routine is always a good idea.  

My very favorite glowy face primers are both drugstore and high-end. First, from the drugstore are L’Oreal’s Lumi Glotion— which comes in five shades–and Flower Beauty’s Supernova Celestial Skin Elixir.

My other favorites are my NOOMI Stockholm Face Oil, The Westman Atelier Liquid Super Illuminator Drops which come in three shades and the product I’m going to use today which is Kear Weis’ primer called “The Beautiful” primer. I’ll mix this Kear Weis primer into my Kosas foundation—which has a natural finish.

Creating The Look With The Right Bronzer:

Another product which is key to creating this look—and is step four—is bronzer. It’s important to have the right bronzer color and the right bronzer placement. Many bronzers can look too orangey or yellow, but what we really want is a true light bronze tone which has slightly more red in it.

A bronzer that truly fits this description is a cream bronzer from the clean beauty brand RMS beauty. It’s their Burriti bronzer. This bronzer doesn’t highlight texture, it can be built up and it creates a slightly luminous glow rather than a shimmery look.

And by the way, if you have oily skin and cream products don’t work as well for you, you might want to try the powder bronzer from RMS which is called their Redimension Hydra Bronzer. 

Now that we have the right color bronzer, we need to focus on bronzer placement. We want to put it on the areas of our face where the sun naturally hits. So we want to place the bronzer horizontally across our cheeks, on the bridge of the nose and on the forehead.  

Glowy Highlighter:

As with the bronzer, the blush formula and placement is also extremely important. For step five, we want to pick a blush that’s glowy—or mix a glowy highlighter in with our blush.

“As with the bronzer, the blush formula and placement is also extremely important.”

And to help our blush last longer, it can help to layer a couple of different blushes. I’m going to start off with Makeup by Mario’s Soft Pop Plumping Blush Veil in the shade “Perfect Pink” which is a lovely cool pink cream formula.

If you have a neutral or warm skin undertone, you might want to check out this blush in the shade “Just Peacy” which is a peachy coral.   

As to placement, this blush application should go under the eye and across the cheeks but not on the cheekbones and definitely not lower than the nose. Earlier I mentioned that when we got to blush, we’d also come back to our eye makeup. So here’s what I’m going to do with this blush in the eye area.

I’ll apply just a very small amount of this blush above the crease of both eyes. By using this color on the cheeks and in the eye area, we’re creating a more pleasing cohesive look since it ties our makeup together.  

Cream Blush:

Over the Makeup by Mario blush on my cheeks I’m going to Tarte’s blush tape liquid blush which has a beautiful glowy formula. It comes in 6 shades and I have the pink shade. 

If you want to really make sure your blush doesn’t disappear, patting on just a light application of powder blush over the cream blush can help. I like using the RMS Redimension Hydra Powder blush in “French Rose” because it has the long wear time of a powder, but has the hydration of a cream.

And it also has a slight luminizing effect. For you neutral and warm skin undertone friends out there, you can find this blush in a beautiful sunlit coral shade called “Mai Tai” or “Bohemian Girl.”   

And if you might feel that just a little more glowy highlight would be a good addition to your look, I highly recommend Tarte’s Glow Tape Highlighter which comes in five shades. I’m going to apply Tarte’s Glow Tape Highlighter in the shade “Pearl Glow.”  

Frosted Lipstick:

And now for our final step six:  lips. I’ll apply a frosted lipstick shade from Wet and Wild called “Light Berry Frost.” Wet and Wild also has two beautiful peach and coral shades: “Sunset Peach” and “Honolulu Is Calling.”  

“If you want to really make sure your blush doesn’t disappear, patting on just a light application of powder blush over the cream blush can help.”

Since lip gloss adds shine and glow and makes our lips look fuller, I’ll top this lipstick shade with the Lawless gloss in the shade “Plesh” which is unfortunately discontinued, but this brand has many other beautiful shades.

For those of you with a neutral or warm skin undertone, Lawless also makes a gorgeous shade called “Annie” which is a peachy golden nude gloss with a pearl finish.   

One product that can be used as a glowy touch up later in the day or night is Tatcha’s Luminous Dewy Skin Mist. It’s gorgeous and it’s so easy to apply with a dampened makeup sponge.  

Lovely Glowy Look This Summer:

Creating a lovely glow is an especially lovely look on our more mature skin and we’re so fortunate that there are some absolutely amazing products out there that can help us look like we have a naturally gorgeous lit from within summer glow. I hope you’ll have fun creating a lovely glowy look this summer.

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