Which color eyeliner

Soft brown — the default. Suits almost everyone, reads as definition rather than as a line, and forgives an unsteady application because the edges blur into the lash base. Choose a neutral brown rather than a warm red-brown unless you have warm coloring.

Taupe — the most forgiving. A cool, grayish brown. On fair and medium skin it is the shade that most looks like shadow at the lash root rather than like makeup. Harder to find than it should be, and worth hunting for.

Deep navy — the useful colored one. Sits opposite yellow tones, so it makes the white of the eye read brighter and the whole eye look less tired. Deep enough to define, different enough to notice. Works on every eye color.

Muted plum or burgundy — the warm alternative. Adds warmth to the eye area, which flatters skin that has lost some color, and gives strong contrast against blue and green irises without the hardness of black. Keep it muted; a bright purple reads as a bruise on mature skin.

Espresso and very dark brown — black's sensible substitute. If you want the weight of black, this is how to get most of it with a softer edge. The right choice for an evening on a lash line that is thinning but not pale.

Black — conditional. Fine if your lashes are still dark and reasonably dense. Otherwise keep it to the outer third of the upper lash line, pressed between the lashes rather than drawn along them, where the extra weight reads as lash rather than as line.

Shades to leave alone. Bright blue, teal, emerald, metallic anything, and white or pale pencils on the waterline. Bright and metallic liners sit on the skin as graphic marks on a face with texture, and a pale waterline reads as a stripe rather than as a brighter eye.

Look at your lash roots in daylight with a magnifying mirror. If they are still dark at the base, you have more latitude than you think. If they are pale right down to the root, go brown or taupe and do not look back.

Test on the back of your hand, then on the lash line. A pencil that looks mid-brown on your hand often lays down much darker on skin, because you press harder at the lash base.

Check it with your glasses on, if you wear them. Lenses change how a line reads, and a prescription that corrects for distance can make a soft line disappear and a hard one look harder.

Judge it at conversational distance, not in a magnifying mirror. The mirror that helps you apply liner is the wrong tool for deciding whether the shade works.

Match the liner to the brow, roughly. A brow in a soft taupe and a liner in hard black look like two different decisions. Keeping them in the same family makes the whole eye read as deliberate.

Own two, not six. A soft brown or taupe for every day and one deeper shade for evening is the complete useful set. Colored liners bought in enthusiasm mostly go out of date in a drawer — see does makeup expire.

The contrast argument is reasoning from how the eye reads an edge, and we state it as such: a line blends into surrounding detail of similar tone and reads as a separate mark when that detail is absent, so a black line on a pale, sparse lash line reads as graphic rather than as lash. You can test it on one eye in a morning.

The navy claim is ordinary color theory — blue sits opposite yellow on the color wheel, so a deep blue adjacent to the eye increases the apparent brightness of a sclera with any yellow cast. That is a well-established principle, not a finding of ours.

That lashes thin and lose pigment with age is an ordinary documented feature of aging hair follicles rather than a claim unique to this site.

Formats, finishes, shade ranges and container details for the products named come from the manufacturer and retailer listings cited below. Shade availability within a line varies by retailer and changes between runs, so check the current listing rather than relying on any guide for it. Every product was confirmed currently on sale before being featured.

We have not tested these products, photographed shade comparisons, run a perception study, or convened a panel. There is no laboratory behind this site.

A softer shade is also the more forgiving one to apply, which is a happy coincidence: a brown or taupe line with a slightly wobbly edge reads as shadow, while a black one with the same wobble reads as a mistake. If your hands are unsteady, the shade advice on this page helps twice.

Press in short dabs rather than drawing a line. A series of small presses between the lashes needs no continuous control and produces a softer, more natural result than a drawn stroke.

Rest your elbow on a table and sit down. An elbow on a hard surface removes most of the visible shake from a hand, and it costs nothing.

Use a lighted magnifying mirror on a stand, not a handheld one — a handheld mirror occupies the hand you need for support. See best makeup mirror for low vision.

If distinguishing brown from black is hard in your bathroom light, mark the pencils with a strip of tape or a notch you can feel, and keep them in different places. Shade labels on liner pencils are printed small and worn off by handling.

A supported-grip applicator takes the steadiness requirement out of the task entirely, which no change of pencil shade can do. If accuracy rather than color is the real difficulty, start there — and see easiest eyeliner to apply for seniors.