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Three ways to get fuller brows

Three ways to get fuller brows

Good brows frame your face and make you appear more youthful. If you pencil yours in, you might be searching for alternative ways to achieve fuller-looking brows that don’t require the time and precision of daily drawing sessions. These three new treatments guarantee golden arches.

Here, three ways to get fuller brows, depending on if you want to deal with them daily, monthly, or even yearly.

1. Daily

Tired of tediously penciling in your brows every morning, but feel like you can’t leave the house without? Reach for a multitasking brush-on wax that doesn’t require the time commitment or precision of a pencil. We love Glossier Boy Brow ($16, glossier.com), which offers a flexible hold that doesn’t leave hair hard or flaky. The wand delivers pigment available in three shades—blond, brown, and black—so after one swipe, brows look fuller, yet natural. The tiny, tapered tip makes it easy to detail brows, so drop your tweezers, let them grow, then brush hairs up then over for better brows in one fell swoop.

2. Monthly

If you dream of having thicker brows, but can’t justify fussing with them every morning, consider getting your brows tinted. This process is especially beneficial for those who have over-tweezed or who have super blonde or grey brows. A brow specialist customizes a vegetable dye color, applies it to clean eyebrows, waits a few minutes, and then removes it (the entire service takes around five minutes). The end result: Your brows look fuller and more pronounced for about three to four weeks (FYI: the more you sweat, the more touch-ups you’ll need). Prices vary, but most tinting services cost around $25. Yes, tinting is a bit high maintenance because it requires a trip to the salon, but doing so allows you to wake up to great brows—no pencil or gel required—for a month. Two places we’ve road tested (and loved): Benefit Boutique and Spruce & Bond.

3. Yearly

Brow products and tinting can pump up mediocre brows, but if your brows are extremely thin, patchy, or sparse, these treatments can make your brows look fake. For natural-looking, semipermanent brows, regardless of how little hair you have, consider microblading—a form of cosmetic tattooing (check out the before and after pictured above). To understand how it works, we asked New York City-based makeup artist and brow specialist, Piret Aava. “I use a manual, non-vibrating tool with 11 tiny needles at its tip to deposit cosmetic grade eyebrow dye and individual pigment under the skin—not as deep as a regular tattoo—to create hair-like strokes one by one,” she says. It’s a tedious process—plan to spend about two hours getting the treatment. She customizes the shape, size, and color before picking up the needle to ensure clients know exactly what to expect. Then she applies a topical numbing cream before creating the strokes.

Following the treatment, she recommends applying clear triple antibiotic ointment with a cotton swab morning and night for 24 hours, then Vaseline for four days (morning and night, plus before showering and working out) to shield brows from moisture, which helps prevent fading. No brow makeup is allowed for five days; no swimming for two weeks. Most microblading services include a complimentary touch-up four to six weeks following the treatment to fill in any gaps and add a second layer for dimension. The price tag is a hefty one—around $900—but the results are long-lasting at one to three years. Our tester said her brows were sore for a day following the treatment and thought they looked bold at first (to be expected), but loved that she could wake up to fuller, younger looking brows long-term.