Korean Beauty For Beginners – Point Makeup

The Korean term ‘Point makeup’ covers eye makeup, lip and cheek products. The eye products are not much different from Western products however the way they are applied is significantly different. Where in Western makeup it’s mostly about achieving a sexy look (such as smoky eyes) Koreans tend to go for the cute look most of the time. This includes either cat eyes (eyeliner applied in a upward wing) or the newer version puppy eyes (eyeliner applied in a slight downward wing) combined with the ‘Aegyo sal’ look.

Aegyo sal refers to the cute puffy under eye area which is highlighted to make you look younger and therefore cuter. It might sound crazy if you never seen it before but it actually looks really cute! Aegyo sal can be easily achieved in two simple steps as shown in the picture below. The first step is defining / contouring your under eye crease area with a dark brown color, creating a shade. The second step is highlighting the inner corners of your eyes and the area above the indent you just made. And that’s it! You probably will look a lot younger now so you are welcome 🙂

Lip products

Onto the lips! In the Western world we have lipsticks, gloss, lipliners and that’s pretty much it I believe. However in the Korean Beauty world they are far ahead from the standard lipsticks. They have lipsticks, tints, packs, two-toned balms and so much more! Lip tints are water based lip products with loads of pigment inside. Since it’s so watery, it’s perfect for the Korean ‘gradient lip’ look, which makes your lips look like you just took a bite of a strawberry! It mostly comes in a lipgloss kind of packaging with a daupher applicator or something similar to a nail polish packaging.

A popular western dupe which made the Korean lip tint trend take off in the rest of the world is the Benefit Benetint. One of our favorites is the Dear Darling lip tint by Etude House. If you want something even more interesting, tattoo packs are definitely your thing. These lip products come in all shades of the rainbow and have a gel-like consistency which can be easily applied all over the lips. After this you wait ten minutes and peel off the gel. Tada! Now you have smudge proof kissable lips which will last all day long!

Cheek products

Next up is the cheeks! In most Korean looks the focus is on ‘chok chok’ a.k.a healthy looking glowing skin. This is achieved by skincare so makeup is just the finishing touch, therefore most Korean blushers aren’t really intensely pigmented. As from a couple of years ago Korean makeup has had some influences from other countries buzzing makeup trends such as contouring from America and the ‘sick’ or ‘hangover’ look from Japan where girls put their blush just below their eyes instead of on the cheeks.

Popular cheek products from the last year are the cheek puff applicators: these are tubes of liquid blusher with a puff at the end so you can squeeze the blush out and blend it with the puff at the same time. Pretty convenient huh? In the blush category cushions were also really popular and almost every Korean brand came out with a blush cushion compact.

Brows

Last but not least the brows! We all heard the term ‘brows on fleek’ all over 2016 and even now still in 2017. In Western makeup this mostly meant eyebrows so unnaturally looking a lot of us natural brow girls skipped this hype instead. The Korean brows have been pretty similar over the past few years and can be simply described in one word: STRAIGHT.

These straight brows are filled in with a eyebrow pencil or powder and compared to their Western equivalent they are pretty thick. Thicker eyebrows give you a cuter and more youthful look. Why is that? You might wonder. Have you ever looked at a baby’s eyebrows? Aren’t they fluffy? Baby’s have such thick cute brows because they obviously never pluck them. That’s why thick straight eyebrows make you look younger. Even though the Korean straight brow has been popular for quite a while, we now see some prominent Kpop stars with a more arched look too. For brows I always recommend to our customers to just follow their natural brow shape when filling in your brows. Anything drawn too far beyond your natural arch will look unnatural. And trust me, your natural brow shape is beautiful as it is.

Our favorites

Just like the base makeup post I will include our personal favorites again. Noteworthy product for point makeup is the Oil Drop Tint from It’s Skin. This liptint is oil based instead of water based and will not dry out your lips unlike most other liptints. Shake the bottle before you use it so that the color drops can mix with the rest of the tint and you have a beautiful even application. Sounds cool? I guarantee it IS cool!

Thank you again for reading! We hope you enjoyed this post and that it was somehow educational 🙂 We will try to upload more blogposts frequently for you all but in the meantime you can also check out our new Youtube channel including Korean Beauty tutorials.

‘XO Team Ichigo