Do you have hooded eyes?

What hooded eyes look like

Hooded describes the lid, not the opening. On a hooded eye, the skin between the brow and the crease is fuller or lower than average, so it folds forward over the crease when the eye is open. The strip of lid that would show above the lashes is partly or completely covered.

Seen straight on, the fold reads as a soft curve of skin sitting just above the lashes. The crease is under it. When the eye closes, the lid unfolds and the crease line shows, which is why hooding is hard to judge from a photo with the eyes shut or looking down.

Hooding can be light or heavy. A light hood covers the outer third of the lid and leaves the rest showing. A heavy hood rests on the lashes across the whole eye, so no lid shows at all. Most people sit between the two, and the fold is often lower at the outer corner.

Hooding is extremely common at every age, in every population and with every outline. An almond eye can be hooded, and so can a round or a downturned one. It also increases with age, as the brow settles and the lid skin loosens, which is why it is the majority pattern after forty.

How to tell if you have hooded eyes

Face a mirror in even light, from a window rather than a lamp overhead. Relax your face and let your brows drop to where they sit when you are not thinking about them. Look straight ahead, not up, because lifting the eyes tightens the lid and pulls the fold away.

Now look at the space between your lashes and your brow. If you see a distinct fold with lid skin showing both above and below it, your crease is visible. If skin from above drapes over that fold and leaves little or no lid on show, your eyes are hooded.

If there is no fold at all, and the lid runs smooth from lashes to brow, that is a monolid. It is a different structure: a hooded eye has a crease that is covered, a monolid has no crease to cover. The two are often confused because both hide the lid.

A crease that shows on one eye and hides on the other is normal, and so is one that hides by evening or after a poor night. Pick the answer that describes most days, and check again in a year if you are close to the line.

The eye shape test cannot see any of this. The landmark model traces the opening, and a fold above it flattens into the surrounding skin in a front view. So the test measures openness, tilt and spacing, then asks one question: is your crease visible, partly hidden by a fold, or not there?

Choosing partly hidden adds hooded to your reading, beside the outline it measured. Skipping the question changes nothing else. Hooded eyes often read elongated or downturned on the gauges, because the fold narrows the visible opening and sits lowest at the outer corner; that is the outline the camera sees, not a mistake.

Hooded vs monolid and downturned eyes

Hooded and monolid eyes both show little lid, and both make the standard crease-shadow instruction useless. The difference is what lies under the skin. Close your eyes and look at the lid: a fold line means hooded, a smooth surface means monolid. On the result card they are separate answers to the same question.

Hooded and downturned eyes are confused because the fold is heaviest at the outer corner, which makes the eye look as if it slopes down. Downturned is about the corners: the outer one sits level with or below the inner one. Lay a pencil across both corners; uphill toward the temple means hooded, not downturned.

The two also go together. A downturned outline with a hood is common, especially with age, and it responds to the same lift strategies: liner that stops before the corner, shadow placed above the fold, a brow tail that ends above the outer corner rather than following it down.

Hooded eyes are sometimes described as small. Usually they are not; the measured eye width is average, but less of the lid and less of the white shows. The test reports eye width against face width as its own reading, and a hooded eye can be wide, compact or typical on that gauge.

Makeup for hooded eyes

Every step on a hooded eye is done with the eye open, looking straight ahead in the mirror. Shadow placed in the true crease with the eye closed vanishes under the fold the moment it opens. The aim is to put colour where it will show, not where the anatomy says it belongs.

Start with a primer or a long-wear base across the whole lid and up to the brow. The fold rests on the lid all day and transfers anything creamy, so this matters more for hooded eyes than for any other shape. Powder shadows set better than cream ones for the same reason.

For the crease, place the medium shade slightly above where the fold sits, so a band shows above the hood when the eye is open. Blend upward and outward toward the brow tail, not down into the fold. The lightest shade goes on the inner lid and under the brow.

Keep the upper liner thin; a thick line disappears under the fold and reappears as a smudge on the hood. Tightlining the upper waterline gives depth with no visible line. Draw any wing with the eye open, angled up toward the brow tail, floating over the fold instead of following the lashes into it.

A short, strongly curled lash does more than a long one. Length pushes into the fold and can flick against it; curl lifts the lashes clear of it and opens the eye. Use a curler before mascara, hold for a slow count, and build the mascara at the roots.

For men who want to look awake without visible product, a clear brow gel brushed up and out lifts the whole area, and a curl of the lashes with no mascara opens the eye more than anything on the lid. The fold is a normal feature; nothing here is a correction.

Shadow tones that suit your colouring come from the color analysis test. Matte and satin finishes stay put on a hooded lid; heavy glitter across the whole lid catches on the fold and reads as texture rather than shine.

Lashes, brows and glasses for hooded eyes

Lash choices follow the same logic as mascara: curl over length. If you wear strip or individual lashes, choose a curled, medium-length set with the lift concentrated at the centre and outer third. Very long lashes touch the hood when you blink and lose their curl by lunchtime.

Brows are the biggest lever on a hooded eye. A brow that sits a little higher, with a clear arch above the outer third of the iris, gives the fold room and makes the eye look more open. Keep the arch; a completely flat brow lowers the whole area and deepens the hood.

The tail matters most. End it above the outer corner, never below, because a tail that dips follows the fold down. Brushing the hairs up and setting them with gel adds a few millimetres of lift without a pencil. A shade slightly lighter than your hair reads softer than one that matches.

For glasses, choose frames with enough lens height that the upper rim sits above the fold rather than across it. A rim that cuts through the hood draws a second line where the fold already is. Lighter rims and upswept shapes lift the outer corner; heavy brow bars press down on it.

Hair that falls across the brow hides the small amount of lid that shows. A fringe that ends at or above the brow, or is swept to the side, leaves the eye open. Layers that start at the cheekbone draw attention across the face rather than down onto the lids.

Hooded eyes and the rest of the face

The outline under the hood still matters. A hooded round eye keeps its openness and mainly needs long-wear product; a hooded elongated eye benefits from a light shade at the centre to add height; a hooded downturned eye takes the lift techniques above. The test gives you the outline so you can combine the two.

Face shape changes the read too. On a square face, a hooded eye with a strong brow adds to a structured look; on a round face the same eye reads softer. The face shape guides cover the outline of the face and the frames and cuts that go with it.

Hooding is often uneven. A fold that is heavier on one side, or that appears on one side first with age, is normal and shows up on the eye symmetry reading as a few points. Brow shape can be adjusted slightly to even the two sides; the lids themselves do not need to match.

Photographs exaggerate hooding. A camera above eye level makes you look down toward it, which lowers the brow and settles the fold onto the lashes. Hold the phone at eye level, at arm's length, in soft light from the front, and you will see the amount of lid you see in the mirror.

Frequently asked questions