Adjust your makeup for sizzling summer heat

The relaxed change of pace may very well be easy, but figuring out how to manage your changing makeup needs in the hot days of summer isn’t always.

Your once-perfect foundation now seems too heavy and too hot. Your expertly blended eye shadows seem way overdone. Your lip liner bleeds. And by midday, is it your imagination, or is your entire face sliding?

What do you have to do to keep your summer makeup looking fresh, especially under such sunny scrutiny? We asked an expert, Allure magazine’s beauty editor Victoria Kirby, for advice.

Pass on the foundation

Prepare yourselves, ladies. Kirby’s first suggestion seems radical. She advises that women skip applying foundation altogether.

“Foundation is just too heavy for the warm summertime months,” Kirby says. Instead, “use a tinted moisturizer with an SPF.”

The sun protection level in the tinted moisturizer should be at least 20, Kirby says, “to protect against the evil sun rays.”

But Kirby knows that many women may think that braving the world sans foundation is a bit scary. So, “if you do choose a foundation,” Kirby says, “you want something that is sheer and lightweight, oil-free. Nothing heavy. Some women love their foundation, and they’re not going to give it up in the summertime. But you want your skin to shine through in the summer.”

Color sizzles

But that doesn’t mean that summer faces should be bland faces.

“You don’t want to look too serious in the summer. You want a little more color to make it look special,” she says. “Summer is a good time to experiment with things you wouldn’t normally experiment with the rest of the year.”

Some ideas: Instead of your plain old black eye-liner, try one in midnight blue, or even better, a silver or gold liquid liner.

Have fun with colorful lip glosses in the summer, she says, or use a tinted lip balm for a less sticky look.

Also, take a minute to pack away your brown and beige eye shadows along with your tweed skirts and velvet blazers. You won’t need any of them in the summer.

“(Those colors) can look ashy, especially on skin that’s a little bit golden,” Kirby says. Choose instead shadows that have cool undertones, such as mauves, lilacs – or even blues.

Mascara’s a must

There’s one essential item you shouldn’t give up, no matter how high the mercury rises, Kirby says: Your trusted black mascara.

“The mascara is something you want to keep all year long,” Kirby says. “Especially in the summer when your skin is a little more bare.”

Lastly, Kirby says, even if you shy away from it in cooler months, try becoming a pro at applying bronzer in the summer.

For the golden sun-kissed look, you’ll first want to apply a light layer of bronzer all over the face and neck. Then rub or brush a second layer only on the protruding areas where the sun would hit naturally: the forehead, the bridge of the nose, and along the tops of the cheekbones.