Concealing Under-eye Circles With Drugstore Products

Nine out of ten people have them, regardless of how much sleep they get: dark circles. These were my biggest insecurity throughout high school and I tried a dozen concealers in the process of trying to cover them up. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of articles, videos, and “hacks” about how to conceal those pesky dark shadows. Thankfully, I’ve finally found a combination of concealers that works for me, so of course I’m going to share it with you!

 

The first step is counteracting the darkness. I’ve seen this done through color correction with green concealer, red lipstick, peach concealer, etc, but I think the best way is the simply lighten the area.The best drugstore product for me is the Hard Candy "Glamoflauge" concealer. This is by far the most heavy-duty drugstore product I’ve ever tried, probably because its purpose is to cover-up tattoos. While I can’t speak on its ability to conceal tattoos, it is a very thick concealer and it can be used for anything from pimples to scars and yes, dark circles. My only issue with this product is they don’t make it in very many shades, so it’s hard to find a good match. I went with the lightest shade, “ultra light”, so it is quite a few shades paler than my skin tone. This isn’t a problem as I only use it to cover the under-eye area, so it lightens the dark shadows to match the rest of my skin. If you pick up this product, make sure to only use a little bit as it goes a loooong way! I’ve had it for more than a year and it looks like I haven’t touched it.

The next step is to reflect the light away from the under-eye area. I use another drugstore product to do this, Rimmel London’s “Wake Me Up” concealer in ‘Very fair’. This concealer has light-reflecting pigments in it so it brightens the dark circles very well. In fact, on good days I skip the first step entirely and only use this. You can also use this on other blemishes, but in some cases this brings more attention to the area because it is a brightening concealer. You’ve been warned!

I took some before and after photos but didn't include them because it decided to start storming outside between the two photos. The lighting was so bad it made the 'after' look worse than the 'before'!

Of course, there are a lot of fantastic high-end concealers that work well, but for around $10 these two products do the job. Do you struggle with dark under-eye circles? Have you found any miracle products for them?

Xx Katie