Exactly how your make-up is ageing you. I've been a celebrity make-up artist for 40 years and here are the nine tricks that will take years off (my concealer hack is a must try!)

Jeanine Lobell, 60, is a celebrity make-up artist and founder of cult make-up brand Stila, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Here she shares her nine easy tricks to stop your make-up adding years to your face...

It's time to use cream blush

I’ve been a make-up artist for more than 40 years and I’ve been lucky enough to work with top Hollywood stars, such as Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz. The one thing I use on every woman, whether they’re aged 24 or 64, is cream blush. It blends into the skin rather than sitting on top, and it gives a real ‘glow from within’ vibe. 

I always use Stila Convertible Color Dual Lip & Cheek Cream (£18, stila.co.uk), one of the products I created for the brand when I founded it 30 years ago. Cream blusher didn’t really exist back then, but I used to dab lipstick on my cheeks. I wanted a product with a high enough pigment load to give you the colour a lipstick could achieve, but one that was not so slippery that it had no staying power (and, crucially, not so sticky that it dragged).

You're applying dark lipstick incorrectly

It’s a make-up myth that older women shouldn’t wear certain lip shades as they make your lips look thinner. It’s not that you can’t, you just have to do it differently. Yes, it’s true, dark colours do make things look smaller and light colours make them look bigger – so sometimes a plummy or dark red lipstick can make the mouth appear thinner and older. 

Here’s my trick... after applying, use a dot of concealer blended in the centre of the lips to highlight this area and make them look fuller and more youthful.

You need to use make-up brushes

When you’re 20, you can stick your finger in a green eyeshadow and slap it on and you look great. But, as you get older, a nice set of brushes are your friends and will help you apply make-up in a more precise fashion. 

The less dense a brush is, the less product it picks up – if you touch your finger on the end of it, you want the bristles to collapse – and that means you can build up the product. Good brushes are a long-term investment. I have had Hakuhodo brushes (£293.99 for a set of six, amazon.co.uk), which are the finest Japanese brushes, for ten years. 

For perfectly good budget options, Mac has great brushes (from £16.50, maccosmetics.co.uk) and so does Elf (from £3, elfcosmetics.co.uk).

Stop putting shimmer all over your eye

Another myth I want to bust is the idea that you can’t wear shimmer as it makes you look wrinklier. Again, you just have to know where to put it. A good product shouldn’t settle in wrinkles, but shimmer is basically a highlighter and highlights whatever is there.  

So, no, I wouldn’t take it from your lash line to under your eyebrow, but if you take a smaller brush and use it in the arch of your eyebrow, or outline the inner tear duct with shimmer, it will wake eyes up and make them look wider and brighter. I would say it, but I love the Pretty Shady Pressed Pigment Shadows (£23, cultbeauty.co.uk) from Neen, the sustainable brand I founded in 2022.

You're not too old for lip gloss

I like lip gloss on older lips. I always start by finding a lip liner that’s as close as possible to the actual lip colour, so you can overdraw a bit and create the illusion of a larger lip. I’m not a fan of lip liner that looks like a line – the goal is fullness without fakeness. 

I like to use long-wear lip liners or, failing that, a long-wear lip colour that you apply as a lip liner with a very fine brush. Natasha Denona’s I Need A Nude Lip Crayons (£23, cultbeauty.co.uk) come in some really great shades, and so do Mac's (£20, maccosmetics.co.uk) and Nars's (£22, narscosmetics.co.uk). 

If you have fine lines, do a closed-mouth tight smile to flatten them out as you apply the liner, then use a little pressed powder to set it. Try Make Up For Ever’s amazing Aqua Seal (£18.64, klipshop.co.uk) that stops lipstick and lip liner from bleeding. Then I’ll use a gloss – any gloss. Light makes things look larger, so gloss that has reflective properties gives fuller, softer lips.

Watch out for eyebrows dragging your face down

As we age, brows get thinner and paler, even if you didn’t overpluck them when you were younger like most of us did. It’s important to have a nice, soft brow – nothing too sharp or angular. I like to use a pencil like Stila Sketch & Sculpt Brow Pencil (£18, stila.co.uk), starting at the top of the arch and through the outer slope of the brow, so you get the shape, before filling in the rest. 

I then set it with pressed powder. Try Clinique’s Stay Matte Universal Blotting Powder (£35.50, clinique.co.uk) on a fluffy eyeshadow brush as this will help your brows look like a natural part of your face rather than drawn in.

Also, you really need to think about your brows’ shape. If your brows curve down at the edges, they pull your eyes down. Sharon Stone has the ultimate brows – they are almost straight, and that’s the look you want to go for. Honestly, in my experience you can sometimes pluck just three hairs from the outer edge of an eyebrow and it totally changes a person’s face.

You're putting concealer in the wrong place

If you’re worried about concealer sitting in fine lines, just don’t use it in the outer part of the under-eye area where the majority of the fine lines are. Most of us want to get rid of the darkness that tends to be in the inner corner, under the tear ducts. You also don’t want to be highlighting any puffiness under the eye, which is what concealer can do. 

Using a pointy, teardrop-shaped brush, place the point in the corner and feather it out. That way you’re highlighting the dent and, if you have any puffiness, the whole area under the eye will flatten out.

It's time to switch up your eyeliner technique

As we age, our eyelids can start to look hooded and the top lid folds over in the outer corner, making it harder to do a cat’s eye flick, if that’s your thing. To achieve this, instead of using a liquid liner, I like to use a damp liner brush with some chocolate brown or dark grey shadow – these colours are softer and more forgiving than black. 

Looking straight ahead, with your eyes open, plant the brush in the outer corner of the eye and trace out and up. If you do just a single line with your eyes open rather than a thicker flick with your eyes closed, it won’t distort when you open your eyes. After that you can use a dark pencil on the upper water line. With that slight flick on the outside but more lightness on the lid, you still get the look of that winged, or cat's eye, liner.

Stop matching your foundation to your skin

One of the problems you face as skin ages, aside from dryness and texture, is hyperpigmentation, whether from hormones or sun damage. When you put a foundation that matches your skin over these darker patches, it doesn’t cover them – it just makes the skin look a bit ashy. So I prefer to use a tinted moisturiser that’s darker to get better coverage, such as Nars Pure Radiant Tinted Moisturiser (£38, narscosmetics.co.uk) and then dust the skin with a lighter pressed powder. Try Make Up For Ever Ultra HD Pressed Powder (£21, sephora.co.uk) to make the face and neck the same colour.

That said, I have found one incredible foundation for mature skin, and that’s the Shiseido Revitalessence Skin Glow Foundation (£49, shiseido.co.uk). It has a really high pigment load in a liquid that’s very dewy and moist so you can get a lot of colour in a very thin layer, meaning good coverage without it looking cakey. And it comes in 30 shades.

• As told to Claire Coleman