How to Trim Eyebrows at Home: A Comprehensive Guide

Eyebrow grooming can dramatically transform your appearance. While many have moved beyond the overly-thin eyebrows of the 1990s, achieving perfectly shaped brows often requires consistent effort. Whether your eyebrows are sparse from over-plucking or need reshaping, you can attain beautiful, face-complementing brows at home.

According to brow expert Sarah McQuarrie, Benefit Cosmetics' National Brow Artist, filling in your brows can make you look more awake. Taking care of your brows can make you look more alert, a little bit younger, a little fresher, and you can do a little bit less makeup overall.

This guide provides detailed steps to achieve your dream brows at home, addressing various eyebrow concerns and providing solutions for sparse, overgrown, or unkempt brows.

Eyebrow Shaping FAQs

Before you start tweezing, it's essential to understand some fundamental aspects of eyebrow shaping.

Are My Brows Supposed to Be Identical?

No, they are not. As McQuarrie says, nobody’s brows are perfectly even, and if they were, it would probably look weird. It’s normal for one brow to be more unruly than the other. Brows are sisters, not twins, but we want them to look pretty closely related.

Read also: Perfect Eyebrows: Step-by-Step

Which Eyebrow Shape Is Best for Me?

Brow mapping is key. According to McQuarrie, don't even try to do your brows without brow mapping, because that's when we get in the disaster zone. Mapping involves identifying and marking three key parts of your brow using brow makeup:

Where your eyebrow should start: Use your brow pencil or finger to draw a straight line from the crook of your nose up to the brow to see where it should start.
Map out the arch in your eyebrow: Angle your brow pencil from the side of the nose through the iris of your eye to your brow to find the midpoint, which should be the peak of your arch.
Where your eyebrow should end: Point your pencil from the side of the nose to the end of your brow, and mark the line where your brow's tail should end.

Solutions for Common Eyebrow Problems

Problem: Over-Plucked, Sparse Brows

Solution: Brow Make-Up

If your brows are sparse, don’t panic. Patience and the right eyebrow pencil will help you until your eyebrows grow back fully, which can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year.

Choose the right color: Whether you prefer a brow pencil, powder, or gel, McQuarrie says your brows are typically darker than the hair on your head. Match accordingly for the best results.
Apply with a light hand: Hold the tool lightly to avoid overdrawn brows. The further back you hold the pencil, the more featherlight and natural-looking your strokes will be.
Mimic hair growth: Use small, light strokes in the direction of hair growth, being especially careful toward the edges and inner corners to avoid a blocky look.
Think outside the box: Draw in some extra hairs, even though they fall outside of the natural brow line, according to McQuarrie.
Blend and clean up: Keep a Q-Tip or spoolie (a clean mascara wand) handy to blend lines and clean up mistakes. These are your BFFs, according to McQuarrie.
Set with brow conditioner: When you're satisfied with your shape, set with brow conditioner to support growth. Repeat on your other brow.

Solution: Tweeze and Reshape

Having too much brow is generally better than having too little. Shaping thick brows is an effective way to enhance your look. Stay within your brow mapping guidelines and clean up accordingly.

Brush and trim: After mapping your brows, take a spoolie and brush the hairs up. Trim any stray hairs along the top edge of your brows using small, curved brow scissors with a rounded tip. Don’t pull or push too much, and just trim the ends, advises McQuarrie.
Tweeze stray hairs: Using a good pair of tweezers, tackle any stray hairs that fall outside of your brow map, both below and above the brow.
Set in place: Set with gel or brow powder to keep unruly brows in place and maintain symmetry.

Note: When reshaping, go slowly and tweeze one hair at a time. You can always take more away, but once you pull it, the hair is gone!

Solution: Trim Brows with Scissors

If your brows seem unruly, trimming them is likely necessary. The key, McQuarrie says, is to just trim the ends while being careful not to cut into the natural shape of the brow.

Read also: When to Trim Your Hair

Brush and trim upwards: Using a clean spoolie, brush the brows up and trim any excess hairs poking up.
Brush and trim downwards: Brush the hairs downward and trim any super-long strays using brow shaping scissors.
Tweeze stray hairs: After you've trimmed up, use tweezers to nix any hairs that fall outside your brow map.
Fill in: Fill in with brow pencil or powder for a polished look.

Additional Tips

Above all, McQuarrie encourages experimenting with your brow shape to see how it impacts your look. Remember to have fun! It's makeup, it comes off, it's not permanent.

Read also: Perfectly Groomed Brows at Home

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