Makeup Monday: Your Ultimate Guide to Contouring, Strobing, and Baking

Contoruing continues to be one of the biggest trends in beauty, with more and more products being created and marketed solely for contouring and I don’t see that stopping anytime soon. To compliment the popular contouring trend are two other makeup techniques that have been taking over my social media feeds: strobing and baking (and no, not the culinary kind!).

While some may argue that these enhancement methods aren’t necessarily “trends” and have been used in the makeup artistry and performance industries for years, they are definitely having their own shining (pun intended!) moment. Below, I’ve broken down each of these techniques and provided tips on how to achieve the look at home:

By now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should be familiar with contouring– if you’ve ever seen an image of Kim Kardashian, then you’ve seen contouring. This is a makeup artistry technique of shading and highlighting specific areas to help define and enhance facial features such as cheekbones, nose, forehead and more. Lately, clown contouring has been all the rage but I opt for a more natural contoured look. Check out this video from makeup artist Lisa Eldridge for creating a perfectly contoured face:

For more contouring tips, please visit my ‘Contouring Tips for the Clueless‘ post.

Think you’re a contouring pro? Shop my TOP 5 CONTOURING products:

STROBING

While it sounds like a new club or rave dance with extreme strobe lights flashing, strobing in the makeup world is basically highlighting on steroids. With contouring, you darken facial areas you want recessed and highlight those to bring out. Strobing focuses on the light and cuts out the contouring/bronzing step by applying almost-to-the-point-of-excess highlighter to areas light would naturally hit and are most prominent: tops of cheeks, middle of forehead, down the length of nose, tip of chin, brow bone, and even cupids bow.

I’ve mentioned many times before that I am a highlighting nut so this is one look I definitely want to try.Okay so I may have already be trying this out but I haven’t gotten too crazy with strobing yet, I think I need to play around with this technique some more. Amanda Ensing gives the perfect break down of strobing in this video, and shares a step-by-step on how to achieve the look and where exactly you should be highlighting:

Ready to get strobing? Shop my TOP 5 HIGHLIGHTERS:

BAKING/COOKING

The latest trend in the contouring family is baking (AKA cooking), a caking technique popular with drag queens and performers (and evidently Kim Kardashian is a fan!) used to set makeup for a flawless, pore-less look and to highlight certain areas of the face. Basically you apply a thick coat of translucent loose powder over concealer/foundation and let it “cook” for 10+ minutes. The result is a flawless finish, and perfectly highlighted features, although the look can be too heavy for every day wear or if you’re not taking photos.

Australian makeup artist Heidi Hamoud breaks the technique down and shares how to bake/cook your face:

Ready to get baking? Shop these TOP 5 BAKING must-haves:

Tell me, have you tried any of these beauty contouring trends? I’d love to see your look!