How to Shape Your Eyebrows at Home, According to Experts (2024)

Properly groomed eyebrows can make a big difference in your overall appearance, helping to frame your face and balance your overall features. “Most people aren’t completely symmetrical,” says Benefit Cosmetics global brow expert Jared Bailey. “But properly looked-after brows can actually create the illusion of evenness.” Not to mention the fact that our brows naturally thin with age, so maintaining them can feel like a little drop in the fountain of youth. Keeping your eyebrows perfectly shaped, though, can get expensive and take up time. Enter: at-home grooming. If shaping your eyebrows at home seems daunting, there’s some basic maintenance that can be easily executed with a little know-how.

Before you begin, it's best going in knowing that you're only going to maintain between appointments. It's best to leave any big transformation to the experts. “I wouldn’t recommend attempting a complete brow overhaul,” Bailey says. Also, don’t rush. “This isn’t something you want to do if you only have 10 minutes before a Zoom meeting,” adds brow specialist Joey Healy, owner of the New York City–based Joey Healy Brow Studio. Set aside about a half hour, and follow these simple steps to shape your eyebrows at home.

Step 1: Gather your supplies—and find natural light.

The right tools are the foundation of every good eyebrow shape—both in a salon and at home. You’ll need a brow pencil, slanted stainless steel tweezers, a spoolie brush, and a pair of small, sharp brow scissors, says Healy. Instead of the brush, Bailey recommends a clear brow gel—your choice, really. Another item you may want to have at the ready, adds Bailey, are some cold compresses you’ve created by soaking cotton rounds or soft paper towels in water and chilling them in the fridge (more on that below).

When it comes to lighting, natural is best. One surprising spot Bailey suggests: your car. “You’ll get plenty of natural light, and there’s a mirror already in there,” he says. And both Bailey and Healy recommend ditching the magnifying mirror altogether. “When you get too close, you can’t see the forest for the trees, and that’s when you over-shape,” says Healy.

Step 2: Identify your natural brow shape using this map technique.

Bailey and Healy stress that you must start by identifying three key parts of your eyebrow: the head (the part closest to your nose), the arch (where your brow is naturally the highest), and the end of the tail (the part nearest to the outer corner of your eye).

Bailey relies on Benefit’s brow-mapping technique, which pinpoints those key areas using your nose as the point of origin. “This is how you customize your brow shape for your face and create balance and symmetry,” he says. Start by resting a thin pencil (Healy recommends a closed brow tweezer) vertically against your nose—where it touches your brow is the head. “That’s where your brows should start,” says Bailey. Mark this spot with a microliner. We like the Benefit Precisely, My Brow pencil.

Rotate the pencil outward (like it’s one of the hands-on a clock), stopping at the outer edge of your iris. This is where the brow would naturally arch—Healy says it’s typically two-thirds of the way from the head to the end of the tail. Mark that spot and move the pencil further, stopping at the outer corner of your eye. This is the end of the tail; mark this spot. Once you’ve repeated this process on both eyebrows, connect the three markings with straight lines both just above and just below your brow—this creates a map that shows you which hairs to tweeze (anything outside the lines) and which to leave alone (anything inside).

Step 3: Tweeze with care. And set a timer!

If you’re using Bailey’s technique, the hairs outside your “map” can go. He recommends using two hands to tweeze properly—hold the skin taut with one and gently remove a hair at a time by tweezing in the direction of growth. “This protects the follicle so the hair will grow back,” Bailey explains.

Healy recommends setting a timer for 15 minutes—and putting the tweezers down the minute your alarm pings. “You’d be surprised how many people start tweezing and can’t stop,” he says. “It becomes a compulsion.” His key cleanup areas include the space between the heads of both eyebrows, the forehead area just above the temples, and just below the arches—but groom with caution. “You just want to tidy up underneath the outer one-third of your brow,” he says. “There will be some hairs you’ll question—leave them be. Now is not the time to take them.”

Oh, and remember those cold compresses? This is when you’d want to apply them to the area to help calm any redness or irritation from the plucking. “Make it a little spa moment,” Bailey suggests.

Step 4: Trim any strays using a scissor.

Once you’ve tweezed your eyebrows, the next step is to snip any outliers down to size. Comb your brows upward using the spoolie or clear brow gel, which Bailey says helps to keep hairs in place and make them easier to cut (just wait for it to fully dry). “The key is to look for those curly outliers, the ones that are jumping out of the brow,” says Healy, who also recommends snipping one hair at a time with the scissors at a downward angle so you don’t obstruct your view of your own eyebrow. “If you can’t see it, you don’t know what you’re going to end up with,” he explains.

This is another opportunity to exercise caution. “Brow trimming is not like a haircut,” Bailey insists. “Not every hair needs to be trimmed.” If, for example, when you comb upward some eyebrow hairs fall mostly back into place, leave them alone. “Those hairs aren’t ready to be trimmed; they just need to be brushed,” he adds.

Healy recommends focusing most of your trimming efforts on the first part of your eyebrow, from the head to the arch, and being scrupulous with anything in the tail portion. “If you trim too much on the tail, you can wind up with gaps,” he explains. “The tails are naturally sparser, and you’re relying on the length of those hairs to fill them out, so be frugal.”

Step 5: Fill in sparse areas with a pencil.

Now that you’ve tidied up the brows, it’s time for a little enhancement. Once you’ve cleaned up the area—dusted away any snippets of hair, cleaned your skin to remove any markings—fill any sparse spots with short, hair-like strokes. Keep the natural eyebrow shape in mind—thicker at the head, thinner by the tail.

A sharp pencil is the gateway to the most natural-looking fill, but there are loads of eyebrow products to help you achieve your dream shape. Another important step, according to Healy, is to run a spoolie through your brows after you’ve filled them in to blend the pencil. This, again, will help make the finished look appear as natural as possible. And there you have it: beautiful eyebrows at home.