No matter your preferred eyebrow style, whether full and fully or slim and sleek, at-home maintenance is essential to keep your arches looking tidy. For most people, that might sound like sitting down in front of the magnifying mirror with a pair of tweezers and going to town on errant hairs. But if we learned anything from the overplucked horror stories of the late ’90s and early ’00s it’s that tweezing isn’t always the answer for expertly shaped brows. Instead, it might be time to introduce regular trims into your eyebrow care routine.
“Trimming can help the brow look tidier instantly without damaging the hair follicle itself,” says Joey Healy, a brow expert and founder of Joey Healy Eyebrow Studio in NYC. He explains that sometimes people don’t actually have that many individual brow hairs — rather the hairs themselves are particularly long and coarse, which can make your brows look unruly. “You could think of this with an older gentleman, for example. Sometimes they [have] long white hairs and all they really need is a trimming, not necessarily an actual shaping,” he says. “If the hairs are really long and curly, it disrupts that shape.”
Healy clarifies that not everyone is a good candidate for brow trimming as opposed to tweezing. As he explains, “You could get hairs that are so short, they stick straight out, or you can get gaps and holes. So you really don’t want to go looking for things to trim.” If, however, your brow hairs are long and sticking well beyond the perimeter of your arches, spending a bit of time carefully trimming your brows can go a long way toward helping them look neat and well groomed. So, if your brows fit the criteria, what exactly is the expert way to trim your brows at home?
Step 1: Invest in Good Scissors
Before you even begin eyeing up your brows, it’s essential that you have the right tools. This means straight edge, sharp scissors, like the Revlon Eyebrow Micro-Scissors, that allow you to cut precisely in very small sections. Don’t think that you can use a pair of childproof school scissors here — your brows will look, well, like a kindergartener cut them.
Step 2: Brush the Brows Up
Keep a spoolie brush on hand when it’s time to trim your eyebrows. And as Healy advises, only brush the brows upwards to cut the hairs since we don’t typically wear our brows brushed down (if someone does, please let us know if this is a pending 2024 trend).
Step 3: Trim One Hair at a Time
Once the brow hairs are sticking straight up, start trimming the hair individually at a downward angle — don’t go and snip all of the hairs together at one time. “We want them to look feathery,” says Healy. “Don’t trim multiple hairs and don’t trim them bluntly straight across. Your brows would never be the same length.” This means you need to go slow and be patient with your brows to get a natural effect.
Step 4: Don’t Rush
Less is definitely more when it comes to trimming your brows, and as Healy reiterates, you can always go back and cut more. It’s also not a daily practice — rather, he suggests once a week at most should be sufficient. “It’s better to wait if something jumps out at you,” he says. “Use daylight, and don’t use a magnifying mirror, [since it can make] you overdo it.” And for men, he urges you to not let your barber attack your brows. “They just put on a clipper guard and then go across the brow, [so] it looks really short and stubbly. It’s all the wrong things.” When in doubt, put the scissors down, phone a friend for advice, and of course, visit a professional like Healy to keep your brows looking flawlessly groomed.
This advertising content was produced in collaboration between Vox Creative and our sponsor, without involvement from Vox Media editorial staff.