How to Keep Your Eyebrow Makeup From Rubbing Off?

Can you find yourself in the following scenarios?

You’ve just drawn on your eyebrows and you enjoy how you look, half an hour later you get itchy and scratch your eyebrows accidentally which smudges your eyebrow makeup.

or

You use eyeshadow and an angled brush, but in the places where there isn’t any hair, you find that your eyebrow makeup smudges off very easily?

or

It is sad to say but you weren’t blessed with thick eyebrows who don’t need a lot of makeup. You find yourself using an eyebrow pencil, but at the end of the day almost all the eyebrow pencils had worn off. That’s no fun when you want to look your best the entire day!

Then, I have news for you. You are not the only one to who this happens. I know it isn’t comforting news, but I thought I would just share it with you.

Luckily for you, because a lot of people face these problems, some solutions worked out that stood the test of time and can help you in your quest to keep your eyebrow makeup from rubbing off.

Below you’ll find all the tips and tricks that I know of and that I found scattered around the internet. I am 100% sure that it can help you solve your problems and let your eyebrows shine like never before!

Dive right in and find the solution that works best for you!

How to keep your eyebrow makeup from rubbing off

As I said, there are a lot of people with the exact same problem as you. Now, as I said earlier, that isn’t particularly helpful, but the fact that other people solved this problem can help you tremendously.

Below you’ll find a list of all the things you can try to keep your eyebrow makeup from rubbing of  

Use a spoolie
This term may sound weird for you but bear with me. This trick is specifically designed to keep your eyebrow pencil makeup on your eyebrows. Here’s what you do: 

Grab your hairspray and spray a bit either on your eyebrows directly or on your brow brush (that is called a spoolie), or on your fingertips. Then, you go in with your brow brush and gently brush (or tap if you do it with your fingers) the hairspray on your eyebrows.

Make sure to do it lightly because you don’t want to smudge your eyebrows in the process ;).

Use a setting spray to set your eyebrow makeup
When you’ve read other posts here on the blog you probably find that I’m a huge setting spray enthusiast. This is not for nothing because it works like magic in most cases including setting your eyebrow makeup. Here’s what you do:

Method 1:
Spray the setting spray on your makeup brush and gently touch your eyebrows with it (just as lightly as you would do with the other method described earlier). Then let it “set” for a moment and this will pretty much guarantee that your eyebrows won’t move the whole day!

Method 2:
This method is for applying setting spray all over your face including your eyebrows.

After you’re done with all your makeup, grab the setting spray and give your face a good spritz of the ol’ setting spray! Now, make sure that you keep your arm at about six to eight inches from your face. This will make sure that your setting spray is applied optimally. 

you might be interested: Does setting spray keep your makeup from rubbing off?

Use a brow powder and brow gel
Now, another great thing that you can try is using eyebrow powder in combination with brow gel. 

A brow powder helps you by filling in any holes or sparse areas in your eyebrows. These brow powders often have a softer effect that other brow products. The great thing about a brow powder is that a brow powder formula helps set your eyebrow pencils to make them last longer.

The other thing you can do is combine the brow powder and the brow gel. A brow gel is ideal if you want a long lasting result! Below you’ll find my favorite brow gel and brow powder.

The brow powders that are my personal favorites are the following:

Best overall:
Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Powder Duo

Best for a small budget:
Rimmel Brow This Way Eyebrow Sculpting Kit

Best value:
The BrowGal Convertible Brow

You’ll find my personal favorite eyebrow gels below!

Best overall:
Anastasia Beverly Hills Tinted Brow Gel

Best budget:
e.l.f. Cosmetics Brow Gel

Best hold:
Urban Decay Brow Finish Waterproof Brow Gel

How to keep my eyebrow pencil stay on?

Besides the already given tips that you can use to keep your eyebrow pencil stay on, there is another trick that you can try to really get your eyebrow makeup to stay put.

Use an eyebrow pencil in combination with a toothbrush
Yeah, you read that right! No, it is not a mistake and you really can use a toothbrush to keep your eyebrow pencil makeup in place. Here’s how it works:

Grab your eyebrow pencil, and draw your eyebrows with small, real tiny strokes. Then grab an old toothbrush and go over the tiny eyebrow pencil strokes and blend the eyebrow pencil onto your eyebrows. After that go in with your brow brush (with eyebrow makeup on it), again using tiny strokes to keep it as natural as possible. When you’ve done that, grab your toothbrush again and blend it all in. You can use a little force so that it all blends in really nicely and will look as natural as possible.

Do you want a less labor-intensive solution to keep your eyebrow makeup from rubbing off? Read the section below!

What is the best eyebrow pencil that doesn’t smudge?

I know, from personal experience, that using the above method can be a bit labor-intensive and that it can be hard to do when you’re in a hurry. To combat that, I think I have another solution for you that works great in preventing your eyebrow makeup from rubbing off.

Use a waterproof eyeliner pencil to draw your eyebrows in! A waterproof eyeliner pencil is specifically made to stay on all day long (and as it is waterproof, you can also swim with it if you want).

This for me is an excellent solution when I want to make sure that my eyebrows stay put, but it’s also great when the weather is hot and you need something stronger than you normally do to keep your eyebrows from rubbing off.

What is the best waterproof eyebrow pencil to keep your eyebrows from rubbing off?

Below you’ll find my recommendations for the best waterproof eyebrow pencils that will help you preventing your eyebrow makeup from smudging.

MAC Shape + Shade Brow Tint
Now, this Mac eyebrow pencil actually is an incredibly fine-tipped brow pen containing the special MAC liquid formula. This pencil is great for blending and will also help you keep your makeup in place.

Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Pen
This brow pen is fully waterproof and is converting pencil users into raving brow pen fans! This pen will help you build and define your brows and, keeping them in place. Besides that, with this pen, you can use micro-stroking to apply your eyebrow makeup with precision (much better than a pencil could ever do).

Sephora Collection Waterproof Eyebrow Pencils
This eyebrow pencil is one of the many great products that you can buy from Sephora. This eyebrow pencil has an ultra-fine tip and a fun thing about it is that it is retractable. when you run out, you simply twist it to get more. No sharpener required. The other side of this brow pencil has a spoolie with which you can tame and blend your eyebrows as you want it.

Conclusion

I hope by now your question: how to keep your eyebrow makeup from rubbing off? is now answered! While you can see that a lot of women have the same problems, you have (hopefully) also found that you have multiple options to fix the issue.

So, go on and tell everybody you know that your eyebrows don’t have to rub off if you don’t want to. They can also use some of the tips and tricks in this article to keep that from happening!

Further reading material

I hope that you found this article helpful and that you had fun reading it. Below I have selected some other articles that you might find interesting. Just click on one of the links and start reading and learning more.

7 Tips On How To Stop Lipstick Smudging When Kissing
Does Setting Spray Keep Your Makeup From Rubbing Off?
Keep your makeup from rubbing off when kissing