Though many people shape their eyebrows by waxing or threading, the drawback is the wait between visits to the salon. It’s for this reason that most women tweeze their brows themselves. If you haven’t shaped your brows before, it’s a good idea to have a technician start you on the right path. A professional can wax your brow to give it a good shape, then you can maintain that shape by tweezing on your own. If this doesn’t appeal to you, electrolysis is a great way to eliminate the need to tweeze your brows (though this requires extra time and money).

Waxing eyebrows is very popular in designing brows because it’s fairly quick and can last weeks, but salon and spa prices can really add up. So if you’re looking to save some money, we’ll walk you through the steps of waxing your brows right at home.

Have Enough Hair

Eyebrow hair needs to be at least 1/4″ long.

Decide On The Shape of Your Brows

Women can refer to this eyebrow shape step-by-step and men’s eyebrow grooming guide if you need help deciding on which hairs to take and leave.

Pull Or Pin Back Hair

You want to see your eyebrows clearly, and not get any wax in your hair.

Trim Eyebrows If Necessary

Brush your eyebrows straight up, and if there are any hairs longer coming out of your natural shape on top, then you need to trim. Use a fine-tooth regular comb or an eyebrow brush to push eyebrow hair up, and then just trim what is outside the shape with small scissors (preferably eyebrow scissors). If you have long or very bushy eyebrows, they may need more bulk removed, see the step-by-step to trimming brows.

Cleanse Eyebrow Area

Use pre-wax cleanser on eyebrows and surrounding skin, then apply a light dusting of powder with a cotton swab. Don’t over do it on the powder, more isn’t better.

Wax On

Apply wax evenly in the direction of hair growth using applicator (wooden stick) to the hair shaping the underneath of your brow. Be careful! You want enough wax to thoroughly cover hair, but not so thick that the wax seeps onto hair that you don’t want to remove.

Cover With Strip

Apply strip in the direction of hair growth, leaving some leftover strip at the end not attached to hair like a tab (say hair grows from left to right- leave leftover strip on right side). Press and firmly smooth hand over strip in the direction of hair growth a couple times, to ensure wax is attaching to hair and has slightly cooled.

Wax Off

Grasp onto the end of strip that isn’t attached to hair. Hold skin taut with one hand, and remove strip in opposite direction of hair growth in one quick pull, all the way to the other side. Don’t pull up, which might be your natural inclination. Press hand down on skin to help relieve some of the pain, after strip is removed. (Sounds silly, but it works!) If a little bit of wax with hair remains, simply put strip back on hair and pull off.

Repeat

Continue with steps 7-9 for the underneath of your other brow, the middle of your brows and on top of your brows (only to clean up stray hairs outside the shape).

Clean Up Missed Hairs

Use tweezers to remove any hairs missed by the wax, and fine-tune the shape.

Clean Wax Off Skin

Remove any remaining residue, with wax remover, baby oil or petroleum jelly.

Soothe Skin

Apply after-wax lotion, or an aloe based lotion or gel.

What You Need

• Wax warmer
• Cream wax
• Pre-wax cleanser
• Baby powder
• Muslin or pellon strips
• Wooden applicators
• Wax remover for the skin (or you can use baby oil or petroleum jelly)
• After- wax lotion, or aloe based gel
• Tweezers