Eye Shadow Tips: Deep-Set or Forward-Set Eyes

Does eye shadow make your eyes look small? Or bugged out? You might be putting it on backwards.

My last post on eyeshadow and placement talked about close-set and wide-set eyes. How where you place the light and the dark make a noticeable difference in how the eyes appear. Now let’s take a look at the same principles applied to deep and forward-set eyes.

Horizontal and Vertical Eye Shadow

Sometimes we apply our eyeshadow horizontally and sometimes we apply it vertically. Have you ever noticed this? I find that most of us just apply with little intention or thought about what we do and what we are creating. However, when we really take a moment to think about what we are doing and how it will affect our faces, we can make big changes.

When we apply eyeshadow light-to-dark in a side-to-side pattern we can make an eye look closer together or further apart. This creates balance horizontally on our faces, often making a face look less pinched or a nose less wide. This is a typical placement and what most people do, however not everyone adapts it to their face and their eyes.

An example of horizontal placement to make eyes closer or further apart and a vertical placement to bring eyes forwards or backwards.

If we take the same philosophy of using light-to-dark to add balance and turn it vertically we can make a deep-set eye look bigger and a forward-set eye more even. This is not as popular in traditional shadow work but can have big impact. It is especially true on mature eyes that are becoming more hooded over time.

Examples of Deep-Set Eyes on Halle Berry, Keira Knightley and Rihanna.

Deep-Set Eyes

A deep set eye sits further back in the orbital bone. For some eyes, that means that the brow bone comes forward and the eye sits behind it, as seen with Rihanna. For others, this might translate as an eye that looks even between lid and brow from the profile, but from the front very little lid shows as seen with Keira Knightley. A smaller eye that is deep set might show little to no lid, while a larger eye that is deep set might have some lid showing. A deep set eye will show more brow space than lid space and because none of us are symmetrical, often more lid will show on one eye than the other.