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Highlighting is a makeup trend that is meant to attract or reflect light while illuminating, lifting and brightening your face. It essentially works to draw light to the center of your face, enhance your cheekbones and conceal under-eye circles and any imperfections.
Contouring and highlighting usually go hand in hand and are included together in palettes that work together to downsize and enhance your favorite and less-than-desirable areas. Highlighting or strobing as it is also known can also be as simple as using your favorite shimmery product to give your cheeks a beautiful glow.
Below are some great face highlighters in cream, powder, and luminous liquid forms. Use them together for the ultimate, full-face contour, highlight and glow glam or separately to give your face and body the shimmery luster it needs.
Compare the Top Milk Honey Highlighting Palette of 2024
Aesthetica Cosmetics Contour Series Kit — Best Overall
The Highlighting and Contouring Kit by Aesthetica Cosmetics is a cream-based set with six blendable, silky shades that are made to sculpt, define and highlight your face. The contour shades are housed in removable and refillable pans that hold three foundation/concealer shades for contouring and three illuminating creams for highlighting. Ideal for all skin types, each color is highly pigmented and the colors in the kit can be mixed and matched to create the ideal color for your skin tone.
Pros
- Each kit includes easy to follow, step-by-step instructions, face shape diagrams, and contour mapping guide
Cons
- You may not use all the colors in the kit
Elizabeth Mott Contour & Highlighting Palette — Runner Up
Elizabeth Mott’s Contour and Highlighting Kit will help add dimension with three powder contour shades while lifting and brightening with the three included highlight colors. Perfect for everyday use, these shades can be used together or separate to create your ideal tone and you can also combine this kit with a cream kit to set your contour and highlight for longevity and intensity.
Pros
- A detailed, step-by-step instruction booklet is also included
Cons
- If you have very dry skin, another option might be better
Profusion Cosmetics highlight and Contour Palette — Honorable Mention
Another powder highlight and contouring kit is this versatile option by Profusion Cosmetics. This set contains five easy-to-bend and buildable shades that make mixing and matching different colors and tones super easy. Ideal for both beginners and professionals, sculpt your face with the three contour or bronzing shades and use the matte highlight to set makeup or create a flawless base upon which to sweep the shimmer highlight for a glowy, lit-from-within look.
Pros
- This kit is portable, thin and lightweight and comes with a convenient brush and mirror
Cons
- There may be some fall out while using these powders
The Beauty Crop | Glow Milk Liquid Highlighter — Contender
A great alternative to powder and cream highlighters is a liquid formula and our pick is Glow Milk’s Illuminating Milk for Face. This liquid highlighter provides a beautiful glow that can build from sheer to intense for that lit-from-within glow we all covet. This champagne-hued highlight is enriched with coconut and argan oil to hydrate and can easily mix in with your moisturizer or body lotion for a natural glow all over the body. Place three dots of this highlighter on the high points of your face and blend for a more natural glow or repeat for a more dramatic strobing effect.
Pros
- This highlighting milk is loaded with antioxidants and vitamins that work perfectly under foundation
Cons
- If you have an oiler skin type, a powder highlighter might be a better option
Buying Guide: Milk Honey Highlighting Palettes
With the right highlighter, you can make your face shine even in the dimmest of lighting conditions. We cover all you need to know about highlighting palettes in our short guide.
What Is Highlighting in Makeup?
Highlighting is a technique that’s frequently mentioned in makeup tutorials and the like, but what does it really mean? In essence, highlighting is the process of making certain areas more apparent or more pronounced, typically by making them appear brighter than usual.
As an example outside of makeup, using a marker to make text in your textbook easy to read is a way of highlighting. In makeup, it works in a similar way - the powder applied to your face makes that area more pronounced and visible. The powder makes your skin absorb less light, causing it to bounce off and make it appear brighter.
Why Should I Highlight My Face?
Highlighting may not seem like an important step in your makeup routine at first glance. It essentially just makes parts of your face brighter - nowhere near as impactful as adding color to your lips or making your eyes more pronounced, right?
Well, highlighting powder is a lot more impactful than you think. Imagine having your makeup mostly done - you’ve bronzed, blended, and your eyes look very pronounced with a combination of mascara, eyeliner, and eye shadow. However, something feels missing - as if your face appears somewhat unnatural. Why is that?
The answer has to do with the nature of light and dark. Something can only be considered “dim” when there’s something bright to compare it to. In other words, while you have eyeshadow on and bronzed up your jaw and cheeks, there’s no contrast to give those shaded parts that extra oomph.
Highlighting isn’t just meant to complement darkening certain parts of your face, either. With highlights, you can make parts of your face more apparent, just like you can do with bronzing. It may not be apparent as bronzing, but you can tell the difference if you look closely.
When Should I Apply Highlighting Powder?
There is no real, concrete answer to this. You, of course, want to put it on after foundation, setting powder, and other powders, but it can be difficult to choose whether or not you should start with shading or highlighting.
A simple way to figure out what you prefer better is by trying both approaches. First, attempt to apply contour and shade, then add the highlights after. Then, do it the other way around, with highlights first followed by the contour. Because highlights and shading are opposites, they won’t be found in the same spot, so the order itself won’t matter.
Once you’ve tried both, try to think about which experience was more comfortable for you. Some people do like applying contour first before highlighting, whereas others prefer doing it in reverse.
How to Maximize Your Highlighting Palette
Try out different tones
Since highlighting palettes come with multiple tones, you should at least try them all out once. Even if you’re picking the palette for just one or two specific tones, you never know if you’ll like the others until you try them.
Also, don’t just put them on with your pajamas or at-home attire. See how they look with your outfits and experiment. Who knows - you may find a combination that you never realized worked so well.
Try out layering and blending
Highlighting is a process that makes parts of your skin brighter and more pronounced, but it doesn’t just make a particular spot flat-out bright. Instead, the brightness is gradual, with it becoming more and more apparent as you reach the center. As such, both blending and layering are two great skills worth practicing.
Blending is a no-brainer - it makes your highlights look more natural against your foundation. Layering, on the other hand, can result in more complex highlights, so if you want to go all out for your next routine, then consider adding a few layers to your highlights.
Test out other palettes
Just because one type of palette works for you doesn’t mean you should only stick to that specific palette. There are palettes better-suited for warmer highlights, whereas other palettes can help if you want highlights that look more “mature” or “refined”.
When picking another palette, try finding ones that have completely different tones from the palette(s) that you already own. By doing this, you end up with more colors to work with, and you’ll be able to blend and layer even more, further increasing your freedom to do whatever you want with your highlights.
Related: Best Cream Contour Palettes
