How to Contour & Highlight Light Skin? | Step-by-Step Makeup Tutorial

At times it is hard to find natural-looking sculpting products, but the actual contouring process can be just as difficult, especially if you have fair skin. If you are not trying to look like Casper, but want to add some dimension to your face this blog post is for you. Today I'm going to talk about powder contouring for girls with light skin complexion, because I found this technique optimal for beginners, especially for beginners with pale skin.

First of all, you need to find a perfect contouring color for your skin tone, because it is so easy to go wrong with the shade of contouring powder when your skin is fair. Most of the time pale skin has neutral and cool undertones. But even if your undertone is on the warmer side of the color wheel, I would still recommend you contour your face with neutral or cool shades of brown. 

Forget about the bronzers with large shimmer or glitters, they never look natural on the skin, instead, go for smooth and matte textures. For this tutorial, I use my favorite bargain contour palette, which contains six neutral matte colors perfect for contouring and setting makeup.

Start off with your regular foundation routine, because perfect contouring and highlighting demand prepared smooth canvas. Don’t forget to set your foundation and concealer with a powder, it is a very important step. If you skip this step or set your foundation partly, sculpting powder is going to look uneven and patchy on your skin.

How to Contour And Highlight Light Skin?

Now it is time to contour the face. I like to use a pointy pencil-shaped brush to apply the color, but you can use any brush you like. The important rule here is to find an imaginary 'border' line starting between the outer corner of your eye and pupil and going perpendicularly to the floor. 

Try to keep contouring and highlighting behind the line and do not cross it. Everything that is going out of this 'border' is too dramatic for an everyday makeup look. Apply the contouring color with a brush, slightly curving the line to emphasize the curvy cheek shape and lift the features of your face.

The starting point of cheek contouring should be somewhere close to the earlobe and going down to the 'border' line softly fading into nothing. After the color is applied, blend out any harsh lines upwards with a clean angled medium-sized brush.

To make your skin look fresh apply just a little bit of blush on your cheeks, right above the contouring. Pale pink and peach hues look the most flattering on people with fair skin complexion, but you can use any color you like. Keep the blush behind the 'border' line as well and don't forget to blend it well.

And what about a highlighter? It can be hard to find highlighting makeup products, that will be visible on pale skin. If you want your skin to shine bright, forget about the matte rule here. Pick a liquid or powder highlighter with a beautiful pearly, satin, or shimmering finish and apply it right above the blush. You can even connect it with the brow bone highlighter and buff it on the skin for an extra glow.

You have finished your makeup look but the contouring turned out to be too harsh? No worries, you can fix this little inconvenience with a regular setting powder. Use a clean powder brush and a small amount of setting or translucent powder to mute the harsh lines of your contouring. Layer the powder over the contouring and with small circular motions blend the line.

Remember that super-dark contouring will not do justice to your beautiful skin. Dramatic contouring only looks beautiful on Instagram selfies, but not in real life. Thank you very much for visiting my blog, I hope you liked my little contouring guide. That's all for today's tutorial, lovelies, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me in the comment section or you can email me. Until next time!

Lots of love,

Liz