Hooded eyes: how to tell, and makeup that works on them

How to tell if you have hooded eyes

Look straight into a mirror in daylight, with your face relaxed and your chin level, and check these:

• Looking straight ahead, you see a thin strip of lid between your lashes and the skin above, or none at all.
• Close your eyes and a crease appears that you cannot see when they are open.
• Eyeshadow on your lid disappears when you open your eyes, or prints onto the fold above it by the afternoon.
• A winged liner drawn with your eyes closed looks bent or broken once you open them.
• The fold sits lowest over the outer third of each eye, and may touch your lashes there.

How hooded eyes vary

Hooding runs from slight to full. With slight hooding a thin strip of lid still shows in the middle, and most techniques work with small adjustments. With full hooding the fold rests on or near the lashes and covers the whole lid. Outer hooding drops only over the outer corner, often making the eye look a little downturned.

Hooding tends to increase with age. Upper lid skin loosens and the brows sit a little lower over time, so a fold that was slight at 25 may cover the lid at 55. When the extra skin is marked, doctors call it dermatochalasis, and it can be heavy enough to block part of your upper field of vision (EyeWiki, American Academy of Ophthalmology).

Hooding is a lid trait, so it combines with every opening and tilt. Hooded almond eyes are the most talked-about version, but hooded round eyes, hooded downturned eyes, and hooded deep-set eyes are all common, and each changes the advice slightly.

Hooded vs monolid vs deep-set eyes

Hooded eyes makeup: eyeliner, eyeshadow, and lashes

What to skip

• Thick liner across the whole lid: it vanishes under the fold, then prints onto it.
• A dark shade only in your natural crease: it is invisible when your eyes are open.
• Cream or glossy shadow without primer: the fold creases it within hours.
• Doing a wing with your eyes closed: check it with your eyes open before you finish.

An everyday look, step by step

Eyeliner for hooded eyes: four styles that show

Four styles show up on a hooded lid instead of vanishing under it. Try them with your eyes open and your chin level, and judge each one from the front.

Tightlining. A soft pencil pressed along the upper waterline, under the lashes. It makes the lash line look fuller with no line on the lid at all, which is ideal when the fold reaches your lashes.

The hooded wing. With your eyes open, mark the tip of the wing on the fold, angled toward the tail of your brow. Close one eye and join the tip to the outer corner of your lash line, then fill the shape. It looks like a bent arrow with the eye closed and a straight wing with it open.

The smoked-out outer corner. Pencil along the outer third of the upper and lower lash lines, then smudge it up and out with a small brush. Soft edges hide where the fold crosses the line, so the shape stays even.

Floating liner. A thin line drawn just above the fold, following its curve, so it sits on skin that shows when your eyes are open. It works best in a color, like brown or navy, and over a primer so it does not print onto the lid.

Hooded eyes or droopy eyelids (ptosis)?

Hooding is extra skin above a lid that sits in the normal place. Ptosis is different: the upper lid margin itself, where the lashes grow, sits too low, often covering the top of the pupil, because the muscle that lifts it has stretched or weakened (Cleveland Clinic).

A quick check: lift the fold gently with a fingertip while looking straight ahead. If your lash line sits just above the pupil and the lid opens fully, it is hooding. If the lash line itself still sits low over the pupil, or one lid is clearly lower than the other, it may be ptosis.

See a doctor promptly if one eyelid starts drooping suddenly, or if drooping comes with double vision, a headache, or weakness elsewhere. Sudden ptosis can be a sign of a nerve problem and needs to be checked the same day.

Can you get rid of hooded eyes?

Makeup changes how hooded eyes look, but nothing applied to the skin removes the fold. Eye creams can hydrate and smooth the lid for a few hours, and no cream or eyelid exercise has been shown to lift a fold of skin.

The lasting options are medical. An upper eyelid lift (blepharoplasty) removes excess skin, and sometimes fat or muscle, from the upper lid through a cut hidden in the crease. Most people take about two weeks off work, bruising can take weeks to fade, and the risks include lids that are hard to close for a while, watery or sensitive eyes, uneven-looking eyes, and noticeable scars (NHS). When the hood is heavy enough to block your upper vision, see an eye doctor first: that is a medical question, not only a cosmetic one.

When the brow has dropped, a brow lift addresses the cause rather than the lid, and a clinician can lift the brow tail slightly with wrinkle-relaxing injections, an effect that wears off in a few months. A board-certified oculoplastic or plastic surgeon can tell you which part, brow or lid, is creating your hood.

Eyelid tape and strips create a temporary crease by holding the fold up. They work best on slight hooding, can irritate thin lid skin, and should come off before sleep.

Makeup for mature hooded eyes

As lid skin thins, matte and satin finishes look smoother than shimmer and glitter, which catch in fine lines. A cream-to-powder shadow pressed on with a fingertip and set with a matte powder lasts longer than a powder alone on crepey skin.

Lifting the brow tail does more for a mature hooded eye than any shadow technique. Fill the tail slightly upward rather than following hairs that have started to drop, and keep the line under the brow clean so the brow bone reads as lifted.

Skip heavy lower liner, which draws attention down, and put the definition in the upper lashes: tightline, curl, and mascara.

Brows and glasses for hooded eyes

Brows

Brows frame hooded eyes more than any other shape, because the space under them is limited. Keep the tail from sloping down, brush the hairs up, and avoid filling the underside of the brow so low that it crowds the fold. A lifted, well-groomed brow can add a few millimeters of visible lid on its own.

Glasses

Choose frames whose top rim sits at or just above the brows, so the lid area stays open. Thin or clear top rims, cat-eye, and upswept shapes lift the outer corner, where hooding is usually heaviest. Heavy, low-set rims that sit right across the fold make it look deeper.

Common combinations

Each eye shape describes one part of the eye, so most hooded eyes come with other traits too. These pairings come up most often:

Check your eye shape from a photo

A photo cannot reliably tell a hidden crease from an open lid, so the detector does not guess. It measures your opening, tilt, and spacing from the photo, then asks you to look in a mirror and say whether a fold covers your crease. If it does, your result reads hooded, and your other measurements stay as they were.