Tightlining: A makeup game-changer for all the style essences?

Want your eyes to pop? Try tightlining.

Tightlining means applying eyeliner to your upper and sometimes lower waterline.

When done with dark eyeliner, tightlining can dramatically enhance the beauty of about half the style essences.

For the remaining essences, tightlining can still enhance your beauty. But you’ll likely want to use a lighter color to get an eye-popping effect.

Here’s the best type of tightlining for your style essences.

Tightlining for Dramatic and Gamine

If you have a ton of Dramatic or Gamine or both, you can harmoniously tightline around your entire eye with dark eyeliner.

This makes sense when we think about these essences’ defining shapes.

Both Dramatic and Gamine are defined by sharp shapes and are flattered by narrow silhouettes.

So these essences are also flattered by dark tightlining, which can make the eyes look sharper and narrower.

Tightlining for Romantic and Classic

The Romantic style essence is also amazing in dark tightlining on both the upper and lower waterlines.

Credit: vanessa-hudgens-wallpaper-5

Romantic Dramatic Gamines Vanessa Hudgens and Keira Knightley.

This is because tightlining creates the appearance of thicker lashes and more intense, sultry eyes—perfect for the glam Romantic essence.

Romantics may find that tightlining in dark but not extremely dark shades—like deep brown, gray, or purple—is especially flattering.

Finally, since tightlining can make your overall appearance look more polished, the Classic essence is also beautiful in dark tightlining that goes all the way around the eyes.

Like Romantics, Classics may want to choose a moderately but not extremely dark color.

Tightlining for Ethereal, Natural, and Ingenue

The remaining essences—Ethereal, Natural, and Ingenue—can find that tightlining with dark liner looks too harsh on their faces. This will be especially true if you have a pale skin tone.

If you have a darker skin tone, dark tightlining may not look as harsh, but it still probably won’t be part of your best look if you have only the Ethereal, Natural or Ingenue essences.

This is because Ethereal and Ingenue both have a gentle vibe, and Natural has a carefree vibe. So these essences don’t harmonize with intense tightlining.

So what kind of tightlining is gorgeous on Ethereals, Ingenues, and Naturals?

If you have any of these essences, it can enhance your beauty to tightline only your lower waterline with a relatively light color, such as just a few shades lighter than your natural waterline.

The “just a few shades” part is key. If you go too light, it’ll start to look intense and unnatural—exactly what you want to avoid!

The light tightlining approach can be great for Ingenues, because it emphasizes the already round, wide shape of the eye.

Ethereals are flattered by illuminating makeup (highlight is so good for Ethereal). So you can even tightline in a shade with slight shimmer, like a shimmery champagne.

And Naturals are flattered by a very, well, natural makeup look. So if you choose a natural eyeliner shade, tightlining can become a game-changing step in a Natural no-makeup makeup routine for subtly brightening and defining the eyes.

Credit: David Shankbonoe

Mena Suvari has lot of Ethereal and Ingenue (and a bit of Dramatic). Her eyes pop with a lighter shade applied on the lower waterline—she could have used a slightly darker, more natural appearing shade, but ultimately it can be a matter of preference on how light is too light.

Here’s a subtler version on Dakota Johnson, who has mostly Ethereal and Natural (with a bit of Classic):

Upper tightlining in a dark shade is optional for highly Ethereal, Natural or Ingenue faces. Dakota has some Classic, which makes it work for her, but dark tightlining isn’t necessary if you have Ethereal, Natural or Ingenue without other essences. 

Summary of the best tightlining for each essence

If you have an essence blend that consists mostly of Dramatic, Gamine, Romantic, or Classic, you’ll likely be amazing in dark tightlining, including around your whole eye.

If you have an essence blend that consists mostly of Natural, Ethereal, or Ingenue, you’ll likely be gorgeous in tightlining with a color just a few shades lighter than your natural waterline color, on only your lower waterline.

Tightlining for the essence blends

But what if, like many people, you have a style type that includes high amounts of essences that both are and aren’t flattered by dark tightlining?

You might experiment with combining both approaches, by tightlining in a darker shade on your upper waterline and a lighter shade on your lower. This will still give you some of tightlining’s intensity and polish while creating a gentler overall look.

You can also try only lining part of your lower waterline in dark eyeliner, such as just the outer third.

It’s also possible that even if you have a blended type, you have enough Dramatic, Gamine, Romantic, or Classic to make upper and lower dark tightlining really work for you—or that you have enough Natural, Ethereal or Ingenue where you find that dark tightlining doesn’t work at all.

Credit: Ed Kavishe

Jourdan Dunn has a lot of Dramatic, so tightlining works for her despite that she also has Ethereal and Ingenue.

Finally, it can be extremely helpful to consider which essences may be specifically manifested in your eyes. For many people, matching their makeup to the specific essences of their individual features produces the most harmonious results.

So if you’re a Dramatic Ingenue with Dramatic eyes, you may find that dark tightlining around your whole eye works, but if you’re a Dramatic Ingenue with Ingenue eyes, you may find you look your best with only lighter tightlining on your lower waterline.

If tightlining hasn’t worked for you in the past

Maybe you have a lot of Gamine, Dramatic, Romantic, or Classic, but you’ve tried dark tightlining in the past, and you didn’t like how it looked.

You may want to try again. It’s possible it wasn’t the tightlining but the surrounding eye makeup, or makeup on the rest of your face, that didn’t look right.

For example, if you have a lot of Gamine and you paired tightlining with soft, smokey eyeshadow, it may have been the eyeshadow that was clashing with your look, not the tightlining.

Or if you have a lot of Romantic, it’s possible that in the past, you paired tightlining with thick, graphic eyeliner or another style that doesn’t tend to flatter Romantic features.

Our faces are all unique, so it’s possible to have a ton of Gamine, Dramatic, Romantic or Classic and not be flattered by dark tightlining. But especially for people who blend two or more of those essences, it may be one of your best beauty techniques.

How to safely tightline

If you’re new to tightlining, you may want to use a tutorial on how to do it safely.

I also like to check the ingredients in my cosmetics with a website like EWG, which provides health ratings for thousands of makeup products. There’s some controversy on whether their ratings are accurate or sometimes exaggerated, but their site at least gives you a starting point to better understand what you’re putting on your body.

You can also use AI—I’ll sometimes enter a list of makeup ingredients into ChatGPT to get an initial perspective on whether there are concerns about allergens or other health issues associated with any of the ingredients.

Color season?

You’ll also want to match your liner color to your color season, of course. (More posts on color analysis coming soon, including thoughts on how you inherit your color season!)