How To: Contouring Your Face

How To: Contouring Your Face

Pre-Keeping Up With The Kardashians, most of us had never heard about face contouring. Once they blew up, it of course became as famous as the now infamous sisters. But if you’re like us, we didn’t fully understand what it meant or what exactly it entailed. We just wanted to look like we had a glam team coming over every day to make us look snatched too. You know what they, say, “there’s no time like the present” and “it’s never too late”, so get ready to learn as much about contouring your face as we know about our fav reality stars’ love lives.

What is Face Contouring

Face contouring is a technique used to define, sculpt and life areas of the face you either want to accentuate or emphasize. This can be done with face tools or with makeup. The cheekbones and jawline are the two most popular areas to contour with the nose being the third. Some celebs have even claimed that contouring has changed their look and they’ve avoided going under the knife by contouring their nose to make the shape look different.

How to Contour Your Face

Much like everything in life, not all contour tools are created equal, but Skin Gym’s are the cream of the crop. In fact, it was tough for us to choose our favorites. Each tool is used differently. Some need to be used over oil or moisturizer while others require clean skin. And always check the directions on the packaging of your contour tool to see which way you should be rolling or gliding to make sure you’re lifting the skin properly, so your face looks flawless when you’re done.

Skin Gym Rose Quartz Vibrating Lift & Contour Roller – We don’t like to play favorites, but this might be our favorite tool to use for contouring. Not only does the rose quartz help open your heart chakra, but it boasts 6000 vibrations per minute to help you lift and contour and give your face that extra pop. Use over your favorite Skin Gym mask- we like the 24K Golden Glow or moisturizer and feel like your face is on fleek. Talk about good vibrations…


Skin Gym Face Trainer Beauty Roller  - This roller could also be called the “Easiest Contour Roller”. It contains a built-in solar panel that helps lift your skin and give you that radiant look of perfection. Use it on clean skin and simply roll over your face. You’ll be rolling in compliments after you contour with this tool! 

Amethyst Sculpty Tool – One of our fav Gua Sha from our Skin Gym collection. Make sure you apply our Signature Face Oil before you kick off your contouring session so the Gua Sha glides easily across the skin. Not only does the amethyst promote wisdom and healing but its heart shape makes it easy to get to every area of your face to divide… er… define and conquer!

Black Beauty Lifter Vibrating T-Bar - This tool is a vibe for contouring your face. It uses sonic vibrational technology which is basically to give the same effect as having a professional facial massage- and stimulates your facial muscles for sculpting and definition.

How to Apply Makeup to Achieve the Look of Contouring

Contouring makeup comes in three varieties: Powder, cream, and liquid. One contour isn’t better than another, it depends on your personal makeup preference. Powder is a great choice if you’re a contour newbie because it’s not easy to mess up. Powder contour is buildable and therefore, forgiving. Cream contour can come in stick or palette form and blends more easily than powder. While it does blend easily, it’s important that it’s completely blended to avoid streaks. Definitely don’t skimp on your makeup brush or blending sponge if you use cream contour. On the plus side, Cream contour gives you more of a dewy JLo glow. And lastly, liquid contour has the most consistent finish and should always be used with a beauty blending sponge. If you choose liquid contour, you’ll want to choose a shade one to two colors darker than your skin for the best finished look. Here are the basic steps for contouring

Step 1: Apply Primer and Foundation

Step 2: Contour Your forehead

Step 3: Contour Your Cheekbones and Jaw

Step 4: Contour Your Nose

Step 5: Apply Bronzer, Highlighter and Blush

 Different Face Shapes and How to Contour Them

As we know from our tween years, attempting the “Rachel” haircut in an attempt to be like Jennifer Aniston- not all haircuts are right for every face shape. The same is true for contouring. While the principals remain the same, the areas you should contour to achieve your desired look vary by face shape. Here’s what you need to know to conquer contour for your face shape.

  • Heart- Sweep contour along outer edges of forehead, along your temples and under your cheekbones. Skip the jawline and only add contour to the bottom of your chin. Blend.
  • Oblong- Add contour to the top of your forehead, below your chin, and jawline. Blend.
  • Oval- Take your contour shade and draw a “3” from your temples to below your cheekbones to the outside of your upper jaw. Blend.
  • Round- Sweep your contour over the outer edges of your forehead, on your temples, under your cheek bones, and your jawline but skip the chim. Blend.
  • Square- Sweep your contour on the outer corners of your forehead and your jaw. Then add a smaller amount of contour under your cheek bones and take it up to just below the temples. Blend.

*Highlight and add blush as you usual, if you like.

To serve looks with a perfectly sculpted face, get any (or all!) of the tools we mentioned at Skin Gym. Everyone will be complimenting your mug and may even wonder if you’ve had work done. While these contouring tools will leave you snatched, they won’t actually turn you into a Kardashian. That’s fine with us. They can have all the drama for their mama… and their new Hulu show.