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Photo: Ipsy

We all know that the key to achieving envy-inducing eyebrows at home is learning how to masterfully tweeze them into shape. But there's another part of the eyebrow shaping process that tends to get overlooked: eyebrow trimming. Trimming your own eyebrows can seem ripe for a beauty disaster (and with no technique it very well could turn into one), but with a little bit of guidance, it can easily be the extra touch that finally helps you become an at-home brow expert.

Below, KnowInsider is sharing a beginner-friendly tutorial on how to trim your brows. Here’s the lowdown on what you need to get started and the key steps to master.

What You’ll Need

Before you start snipping, there are a few other tools you'll need besides scissors. Here's what to grab.

A Spoolie: If you've never heard of a spoolie brush before, it's a beauty tool that looks like a mascara brush without any product on it. It's used as a sort of tiny comb for your eyebrow hairs to make sure none of them go against the grain (AKA, go in the wrong direction). You can purchase a spoolie on its own, or you can pick up a multi-tasking eyebrow pencil like the SKONE COSMETICS Brow Wand.

Brow Scissors: Do not (we repeat, do not!) use just any scissors to trim your eyebrows. Kitchen or craft scissors should be off the table entirely. These are way too big to use for such a delicate job. Cuticle scissors also aren’t great because they're curved, which could end up making some of your brows longer than the rest. It's best to use eyebrow scissors, which are small with two perfectly straight blades. We recommend the F.A.R.A.H BRUSHES Brow Scissors.

Tweezers (optional): It's never a bad idea to have a pair of tweezers handy when doing any kind of eyebrow grooming. You can use tweezers to clean up any stray hairs before you start trimming. We love the classic BOBBI BROWN Tweezer for extra precise plucking.

How to Trim Your Eyebrows, Step-by-Step

Step 1: Clip Your Hair Back

Especially if you have bangs, clipping your hair back will allow you to see your brows without any disruption, minimizing the risk of over-trimming.

Step 2: Fill In Brows With a Pencil

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Photo: Fashionista

We recommend filling in your brows with a pencil according to how you actually "wear" them before trimming. This helps create a visual guide and will avoid over-trimming. To do this, use short, feathery strokes to lightly shade the skin underneath your brow hair, making sure to go against the direction of hair growth to access underneath the hair, as said by Byrdie.

Step 3: Brush Upward

Start your brow-trimming process by first figuring out which brow hairs need to be trimmed. To do this, take a clean mascara wand (or a spoolie brush) and brush all of your hairs in an upward motion—tails included.

Step 4: Begin Trimming

Next, take your brow scissors (use a pair that is slightly slanted, which provides a superior angle) and trim the long hairs that stick out above the top of your brow's hairline. Cut the hair where it starts to bend or curl, staggering the lengths for an even more natural look. Be careful not to trim them too short, as doing so can give the appearance of gaps in the brows.

Avoid cutting the hairs straight across or all at once. Instead, use caution to only trim the longer hairs that protrude past the brow line, cutting one at a time.

Step 5: Assess and Evaluate

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Photo: Daily Vanity

After your initial run-through, it's a good idea to move back from your mirror and assess. In many cases, it's recommended to just stop (after all, we all know how easy it is to just keep going when it comes to brow maintenance).

Step 6: Trim More and Tweeze If Needed

If you find that the brows still look uneven, continue to brush the hairs up and trimming any strays until they all align with your natural brow shape. When it comes to stray hairs, this would be the time to tweeze them. Normally, stray hairs sit beneath your brow shape. A word of caution: Be careful tweezing above the brow—you'll find very few strays there, to begin with.

Always tweeze with a regular mirror versus a magnifying mirror (it could cause you to remove too many hairs). Also, tweeze in natural light so you don't go overboard.

Voilà! Perfectly trimmed brows ready for action.

Tips: it’s deceptively easy to over-manicure your eyebrows. To avoid overdoing it, groom them slowly and frequently take a step back from the mirror to access how they’re looking. Also, try to avoid using a magnifying mirror when trimming or tweezing.

The magnification makes it easy to accidentally remove too much, according to Ipsy. Nothing’s worse than starting off with a Cara Delevingne brow in mind and accidentally over-trimming your perfect arches into the nearly-invisible brows of the ‘90s.
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