beauty

Apparently we've all been plucking our eyebrows wrong.

Image: iStock.

Not everyone has the cash to see an “eyebrow technician” every time their brows get unruly. So where do we turn when we’re sporting a forest above our eyes? To our tweezers and bathroom mirror, obviously.

But we have bad news – apparently we’re all (sorry guys, we’re lumping you in with us here) plucking our eyebrows incorrectly. It all comes down to your bathroom lighting.

RELATED: 4 clever ways to deal with thinning eyebrows

Brow expert Sania Vucetaj told Refinery29 that you should only ever tweeze your brows in dull light.

“The more lighting you have, the more chances you have to tweeze too much and get obsessive,” she says. (Post continues after gallery.)

“My clients who have homes in surburban areas all have that natural, bright light that comes through the windows and it causes them to tweeze more, resulting in thinner brows. Let your hair follicles breathe and you’ll see your brows come in fuller.”

RELATED: Lena Dunham has found the solution for sparse eyebrows

Director of Sydney’s HoneyTusk eyebrow studio, Marli Stretton, says being a little over zealous with your tweezers is the biggest eyebrow error people make.

"The most common mistake is over-plucking, especially in the middle of the brows. People think that a hair looks like a stray but when they stand back it actually makes up part of the brow," she says.

"Over tweezing in the middle can make the nose look much larger and it takes a really long time for it to grow back. It's also an area that is really hard to cover a mistake with pencils or powders because it's right at the front of the brow."

ADVERTISEMENT

Don't let that scare you off using the tweezers at home though.

RELATED: We asked a brow expert to fix our brows

"Maintaining your brows between visits can really help to keep the brows in shape, and then when you come in your brow artist can focus on the nitty gritty of giving you perfect brows," Stretton says.

"Tidying them in between each visit is not a bad thing you just have to remember to take it slow and steady and really think about each hair you're taking. You can't rush these things."

If you're not an eyebrow bar kind of woman, the trick to maintaining them at home is to aim only for the stray hairs underneath and in the middle, and avoid the top altogether.

Avoid plucking the top altogether. Image via iStock
ADVERTISEMENT

 

"Doing the tops wrong can really ruin the whole shape of the brow and it can be difficult to get a clean shape when looking at yourself through a mirror reflection," she says.

"Just remember to tweeze a few hairs then stand back and have a look, then go back and do a few more."

If you find yourself going on a plucking blitz, here's a tip that could help you:

"Fill your brows in before you start tweezing them. Even if you fill them in with a thick black outline from an eyeliner, then you can around the line and not worry about taking ones you shouldn't," she says.

RELATED: When plucking your eyebrows becomes obsessive

If you need to up your brow maintenance game, there are two products you need in your kit: a pair of sharp tweezers with a thin tip like the Manicare Ultimate Slant Tweezers ($12.95) and a brow brush (a new toothbrush works just as well too if you struggle to get your hands on one).

"If you're going to maintain your brows, then do it as the hairs come to the surface. Don't leave them until they get messy otherwise it's too hard to see the shape," she says. (Post continues after gallery.)

And her golden piece of advice?

"My rule of thumb when tidying them yourself is if you go to take a hair and you think, 'Should I or shouldn't I?', then the answer is SHOULDN'T," she says.

Got it.

Related: The 4 common signs that your relationship is about to fail.

Do you pluck your eyebrows?