Coloured eyeliner stopped being a festival thing the moment people started wearing it with a bare face. That is the whole logic of the current version: one line of colour instead of a full look. Skin evened out, brows brushed, maybe a little blush — and nothing else competing.
Three wearable formats
A coloured tightline. Colour along the lash roots instead of black. From across a room it reads as unusually vivid lashes; up close it reads as a deliberate choice. The most office-proof option on this list.
A coloured tail only. The main line stays black or brown, and the last five to seven millimetres switch to colour. A halfway house if a full coloured wing feels like a lot.
Colour on the lower lash line. Bottom only, with the upper lid completely bare. The boldest of the three and, oddly, the easiest to execute — a straight line under the lower lashes is far simpler than a wing.
Picking a shade
Work from your eye colour, not to match it but to contrast with it:
| Eye colour | Try |
|---|---|
| Blue and grey | Warm terracotta, copper, bronze |
| Hazel and light brown | Blue, emerald, plum |
| Green | Burgundy, plum, warm purple |
| Deep brown | Strong cobalt, fuchsia, bright green |
If you want one shade to start with, navy. It suits everyone, passes for near-black in poor light, and clearly reads as colour in daylight.
Where it goes wrong
- Coloured liner is the only accent. Nude lip, and either no eyeshadow or a skin-toned wash.
- Never a second bright colour on the lid. Blue liner plus pink shadow is stage makeup.
- Keep blush neutral rather than fighting the liner for attention.
- Opacity matters more than brightness. A sheer, patchy line looks like a mistake; the colour should lay down in one pass.
The trick that makes any colour pop
Coloured formulas are often less pigmented than black ones. Fill the lash roots with a black or brown pencil first, then draw the coloured line on top. The colour sits denser, the dark base never shows, and a shade that looked weak in a swatch suddenly works.
Available pencil and liner shades are listed in the current catalogue on faberlic.com. More eye ideas are in the makeup section.