Learning how to shape eyebrows may seem intimidating, but it’s fairly easy to pull off on your own with the rights steps and tools. If you’re still a bit skeptical, it’s important to note: These are not the same eyebrows you plucked away in high school. We’ve evolved from the superthin eyebrows of the ’00s—despite what the recent skinny brows resurgence may tell you—to fluffier, healthier, fuller brows that, honestly, don’t need as much work as you think.
According to Sania Vucetaj, founder of Sania’s Brow Bar in New York City, less is truly more when it comes to how to do your brows. Vucetaj, who has groomed the likes of Rihanna and Sarah Jessica Parker’s iconic brows, is all about promoting brow follicle health and tells her clients the same thing whenever they want to shape their own.
“Get rid of your magnifying mirror and get rid of bright light,” Vucetaj says. “Natural lighting only.” Zeroing in on your eyebrows will make you extra susceptible to going overboard, especially if you’re worried about tadpole brows. “It takes six months to get hairs to grow back,” she warns.
Another one of Vucetaj’s brow commandments? “No creams, no lotions, nothing around the brows,” she says. These products can flog your follicles and inhibit hair growth, so be extra cautious when applying skin care around the brow area.
Lastly, Vucetaj warns against using waxing or threading for shaping eyebrows, since both can be damaging to follicles and run the risk of removing too many hairs. “Waxing stretches the skin,” she says. “It’s the thinnest skin of the body, but also wherever the wax falls, that’s pretty much the shape. Threading, they pull the hairs in every direction and a lot of the times there’s no precision there either.”
Vucetaj has owned her tweezer-only brow bar since 2011. “With tweezing, it’s one hair at a time, as you can see. So you could actually mold the shape and sculpt it as needed. And when it’s one hair at a time, the chances of it going too far is very minimal.”
Now that you have all the essentials down, here is everything you need to know on how to shape eyebrows at home.
Step 1: Find your placement
Everyone’s natural brow shape is unique to them, but there are a few guidelines you can generally follow when assessing your placement. “Your brows should always start centered with the top ridge of your nose—not the bottom, the top,” says Vucetaj. “It’s really important that you don’t separate this too much.”
The arch should always be three-fourths of the way back. An easy way to find your natural arch is by taking a finger and gently pulling the skin above your eyebrow up. “You can always lift the skin to recognize where your natural arch shape is,” Vucetaj recommends.
You can also judge how many hairs you should remove in relation to your eyes. “To find how high or low your arches should sit, you’ve got to see how much space you have from your eye to your brow,” she says. “If you have a lot of space, you want to keep the brows a little fuller. If you have very little space, you want to go higher to open up the eyes.”
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