Many women with Asian heritages have a hard time finding good makeup products designed specifically for Asian skin, and importing cosmetics from Asian countries can cost a small fortune. After a few years of trial and error, I finally learned how to use certain colors to play up my best features, even though they weren’t specifically designed for an Asian women.
Here’s what I learned about Asian makeup tips.
Best Asian Makeup Tips
Asian women look best in medium to dark colors of any hue. Good Asian makeup color choices include ashy browns and bronze shades, which are ideal neutral colors for the eyes, and foundations and powders should have yellow bases to compliment the golden undertones in Asian skin.
Bold, dark jewel colors look lovely against dark eyes and lashes, or you can forgo eye shadow entirely in place of jet black liquid eyeliner. If you don’t have the second eyelid crease that most other ethnicities have, you can recreate one through a thin smudge of dark, golden-under-toned brown shadow.
Just remember that most Asian girls have less actual space on their eyes to work with, so don’t do too much all at once on your eyes, or the entire effect will seem a bit fake. Most Asian girls have very even skin tones, so I recommend only liquid liner, mascara, and a little blush for a casual daytime look. Shading in an eyelid crease takes time to do well, so you probably only want to save that for special occasions.
Since Asian faces tend to be a little flatter than average, bronzers and darker foundation to create lights and shadows can add depth to your face. Light, shimmery highlights should go right under the eyebrow, and under-eye concealer should always be used to reduce the appearance of puffiness or shadows under the eyes.
If you’ve got more time to spend on makeup, adding shadows to the sides of the nose and temples, while lightening the bridge of the nose, the inner corners of the eyes, and the cheekbones, can have an immediate and dramatic affect on your appearance.
Curling your eyelashes makes a huge difference to, because most Asian’s eyelashes are fairly straight and don’t stick upward at all. Colored mascara can bring attention back to your eyes, or black mascara can create a pleasant neutral look.
Try a soft plum or reddish-pink on the apples of your cheeks on top of the bronzer. Usually, lips should be fairly subtle and not more than a little glossy. Almost all Asian women are going to want the attention to be on their lovely eyes.

First, you need a foundation with yellow undertones in it to match your skin. This may make your skin appear more sallow than you want at first, but you can add non-yellow based color afterward to liven up your skin tone. However, you have to match your natural coloration at the base of this so your makeup’s overall results look effortless and flawless.