How to choose the best eyebrow shape for your face

From arch-enemies to lovers.

I believe eyebrows should come with an instruction manual. In my two and a half decades on Earth, I have butchered my brows a scandalous number of times. They’ve been unruly and beyond bushy, they’ve also been short and shapeless. I’ve plucked, waxed and threaded them. I’ve been close to bleaching them. If you haven’t already deduced, I’m pretty lost when it comes to eyebrows.

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Nevertheless, brow trends almost always catch my eye. I’ve fantasised about thin brows, laminated brows, straight brows and sculpted brows. But before making a drastic change and committing to a brow-over, I wanted to chat with an expert. I sat down with Abbie Lawley, founder of Melbourne-based brow salon, Get Fluffy, to demystify the lore of perfect brows.

How can you find your perfect brow shape?

Technically, it’s actually a really simple method that we can use to find the perfect brow for each individual face shape. So when you’re looking at your brows… you never want to look at just your brows and just your eyes. You want to look at the entire face in a holistic way. Look at your jawline, nose, nose bridge, where your eyes finish, where your nostrils start and where your temples end… We always start by mapping the brows.

Can you do this at home?

It’s so, so easy. The different parts of the face that you want to map are firstly the outside corners of your nostrils, so kind of where your smile lines hit your nose. You want to almost make a line through the outer corner of the eye like you were doing a winged liner up towards the temples. So technically that’s where your perfect brow ends. The point of reference for… where your brows should start is normally [the] little points in between your nose, like [where] your nose bridge rolls up.

 

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You can use a pen, you can use a brown pencil, you can use some floss that’s been dipped in some eyeshadow, that’s my personal favourite. You can literally mark those points out yourself. In terms of an arch, you want to go from your nose. I like to go through the outsides of the pupils and then straight up through the centre of your brow. So that’s going to give you where your perfect arch sits. It sounds like it’s really complicated, but it’s actually not. It’s really three points and it’s so easy to do at home in the mirror.

There are TikTok filters that mimic brow mapping lines. Do these actually work?

My clients love them. I feel like they’re a really good starting point if you’re really confused and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I have no idea what you’re talking about with these points’. Bringing up that filter is actually a really good place to start because it’s going to show you a rough estimate as to where lines need to go.

Is your natural brow shape the one that’s most suitable?

I was actually talking with an artist [who does] Renaissance[-style] paintings. I really love the theory they have behind brows which is that every natural brow shape pretty much matches your face shape perfectly. Nine out of 10 times in the salon, the [brow] map is pretty much perfection [for] what that particular client has. It’s minor tweaks and changes we make that really elevate the brow from there.

Typically, how do you know if you’d suit thin eyebrows?

A lot of the time people are really looking for a bit of a lift in the tail. You can get some concealer at home and almost block out… what it would potentially look like without those hairs there. If you are thinking of going for the thin brow, [consider your] method of hair removal.

If you’re going to be consistently waxing from the same place, what you want to remember is that every single time you wax the brow you are causing friction and damage to the follicle. So I recommend using a brow razor. That’s going to be a really good way to do it without causing any sort of damage to the follicles [and] it’s non-committal, which we love.

What eyebrow shade is typically flattering?

This is where the fun starts. I always think that two shades lighter than your usual colour looks really beautiful and that’s probably going to give you the most natural look.

Do you mind giving a rundown of various face shapes and the brows that best suit them?

I used to read these in magazines all the time. I used to get like, ‘Oh my gosh, like a heart-shaped face suits this, or a round-shaped face suits that’. [Now,] I look at three things. Number one is daily maintenance. How much time do you actually have to put into your brows? That is going to make the biggest difference as to what sort of shape you go for. Because if you can’t maintain them, some shapes are completely off the table.

Number two is going to be your overall style and aesthetic. When I have someone that comes in and they are in full ’90s, I know exactly what they’re thinking and I know that they can keep up that aesthetic. But if you’re a little bit cool on the weekends, but you work a corporate job, you’re going to want to do something that’s kind of in the middle.

The other thing is colour… [I] really encourage people to have a look and see what they have in their wardrobe. What sort of makeup do they like to wear? Is it intense? Is it not? Do they wear a full face of makeup on the daily? Do they prefer their brows to be a little more natural? It really is so personal.

For more on perfect brow shapes, try this.