Not all eyeliners are created equal. And that’s good because not all eyes are the same. Plus, when you have a unique eye shape like hooded eyes, the right eyeliner is essential to ensure your liner stays visible, looks...

Not all eyeliners are created equal. And that’s good because not all eyes are the same.

Plus, when you have a unique eye shape like hooded eyes, the right eyeliner is essential to ensure your liner stays visible, looks fantastic, and lasts. 

Hooded eyelids can particularly present unique challenges when applying eyeliner.

But don’t worry, with the best eyeliner for hooded eyes, you can keep your lines clean and prevent them from disappearing under the folds of your lids!

Check out our top picks for the best hooded eye eyeliner and see how they can help gorgeously complement your hooded eyelids.

The 12 Best Eyeliners for Hooded Eyes

When choosing eyeliner for hooded eyelids, it’s essential to find products that are reliable, long-lasting, waterproof, smudge-proof, and easy to use. Here are some of our top picks!

Gel Eyeliner

Gel eyeliner is a good beginner eyeliner for hooded eyes because it allows you to be precise but is more forgiving than liquid eyeliners.

Many are also smudge-proof and long-lasting.

This gel-based waterproof liner is a cult classic from Bobbi Brown and the perfect eyeliner for a wide variety of looks, from soft cat-eye to big and bold winged liner.

It’s one of the best eyeliners for hooded oily eyes because it’s sweatproof, smudge-proof, fade-proof, and humidity-proof, so it won’t budge, even when you accidentally draw past your lid’s crease. 

This highly pigmented color comes in a pot and works beautifully with a fine precision brush to effortlessly create stunning and long-lasting dramatic looks.

Maybelline is a well-trusted and highly-reviewed brand with excellent products, and this eyeliner is no different. It’s one of the best drugstore liquid eyeliners for hooded eyes. 

This vibrant color comes from highly concentrated pigments in a clear gel base, creating intense lines for lasting drama.

It’s smudge-proof and waterproof, and this gentle formula is suitable for sensitive eyes and even contact lens wearers.

This gel liner offers long-lasting wear and is one of the best long-lasting eyeliners for hooded eyes, lasting up to 24 hours. It also comes with a precision brush for clean lines and easy application.

This highly pigmented gel eyeliner is good for hooded eyes and provides vibrant color payoff and full coverage with just one layer while ensuring long-wear and smudge-proof beauty.

It’s creamy, quick-drying, and easy to manipulate, allowing you to effortlessly create the perfect line for your hooded eyes, from gorgeous winged tips to floating eyeliner.

Plus, it’s water-resistant and smudge-proof to ensure your hooded lids won’t mess up your look and your beautiful lines last longer.

Apply it with an angled brush for perfect spot-on application for best results. 

Pencil Eyeliner 

Gel texture eyeliner is versatile but isn’t necessarily for everyone. For those who find manipulating gel or cream challenging, pencil eyeliner is one of the easiest eyeliners to use.

They are versatile, easy to use, and equally easy to bring around. Plus, pencil eyeliners tend to be more forgiving of mistakes. 

When looking at pencil eyeliners as a potential eyeliner on hooded eyes, be sure to pick one that allows for precise application, sharpens and holds tip shape well, and has just the right softness so that it spreads evenly.

Longevity is one of the primary things you want in a liner, making this Revlon cult classic pencil one of the best waterproof eyeliners for hooded eyes. Its formulation can last up to 24 hours!

Plus, this liner has gorgeous and intense pigmentation and can be used in many ways, from dramatic winged liners to cat eyeliners and more. 

It also has a built-in sharpener to ensure precise lines every time and a blender to create a gorgeous smokey look.

It comes in eight shades and is the perfect go-to liner product for every season.

NYX mechanical eyeliner is a fantastic and reliable choice for hooded eyelids eyeliner. This retractable pencil liner covers like a liquid liner but has a creamy formula that holds for hours.

Plus, it’s simple and doesn’t need to be sharpened. All you need to do is twist and use. However, you can sharpen the tip for a more precise application on hooded lids.

This liner is smudge-proof, glides on effortlessly, and lasts all day through heat and humidity. It is an excellent choice if you want fuss-free beauty that lasts.

Plus, it comes in various shades, perfect for all occasions.  

Pencil liners are often viewed as the workhorse of eyeliners and aren’t often considered as luxe as the liquid or cream liners. This liner, though, from Urban Decay, is both luxurious and easy to use.

Its award-winning waterproof and smudge-proof formulation delivers intense and long-lasting color for up to 16 hours, perfect for preventing any transfer on your hooded eyes. 

It also comes in a wide variety of shades and finishes and offers a versatile and easy-to-apply liner that you can use to create tight lines, wings, and so much more.

Urban Decay is a fan favorite for a reason, and this liner goes the extra mile with a formula that contains vitamin E, jojoba oil, and cottonseed oil that helps condition the lash line.

Liquid Eyeliner

Liquid liner is a popular choice for beauty enthusiasts who love having control over the smoothness and thickness of their lines. 

However, the downside is that a liquid liner tends to be more challenging to use if you’re inexperienced, and once it sets, it’s harder to repair.

If you’re adept at applying liner, the best liquid eyeliners for hooded eyes are smooth, long-lasting, and don’t cake or smudge.

Stila’s award-winning liquid liner is a user-favorite and one of the best liquid eyeliners on hooded eyes. Its all-day liquid formulation enables you to create gorgeous, crisp lines or thick, dramatic looks.

It comes with a fine marker-like tip that helps ensure precise application whether you’re an old pro or just starting to get comfortable with liquid liner. 

The liquid glides on smoothly with ease, without skipping or smudging. It dries quickly and stays on and vibrant all day.

Plus, Stila provides users with options. This original liquid liner is a great middle-ground for thin and thick lines. But if you want more delicate lines, you can also use the Stila All Day Micro Tip Eyeliner.

Liquid liner is great for special occasions because it lets you create hyper-saturated dark liner looks that last. Whether it’s thin, clean lines or thick wings, liquid liners can help you make the perfect look.

This liquid liner from Fenty Beauty is a fantastic choice for an eyeliner for double-hooded eyes. When the skin of the lids is really low, the liner sometimes disappears. With this delicate liquid liner, you can create a clean floating liner perfect for deep hooded lids.

Plus, this liner has an innovative flex tip and easy-grip triangle shape, making it easy to use and apply. The liner glides on smoothly, dries quickly with a satin finish, and won’t transfer.

It’s made with clean ingredients, is cruelty-free, and is free from harmful chemicals like parabens and phthalates.

Benefit is known for creating high-quality beauty products that produce excellent results, and this eyeliner is one of the best winged eyeliners for hooded eyes because it glides on smoothly, making it easy to create gorgeous winged tips.

It doesn’t fade, flake, bleed, or smudge, so you can be sure your liner lasts. Plus, it’s a quick-dry, waterproof formula that lasts up to 24 hours for long-lasting liner looks.

And if you want a velvety matte finish with the precision of liquid, this liner goes on liquid but dries with a super-smooth matte look, perfect for creating any look.

So if you want thick winged eyeliner or delicate and sharp controlled lines for everyday wear, this roller liner from Benefit can help you achieve your desired look.

Dual-Ended Eyeliner

If you are still determining which type of eyeliner you want to use or if you want variety, then a dual liner might be the best choice for you.

Dual liners give users a choice. They combine gel, liquid, and pencil, giving users the option of which eyeliner to use depending on the day or occasion.  

If you love the ease of pencil eyeliner and the drama of liquid liner but don’t want to carry two tubes, this is the perfect solution.

In this dual-ended pen, you get NYX’s highly pigmented kohl pencil with the felt-tipped precision of its dramatic liquid liner.

And you can use them both together to create gorgeous smoldering looks. 

The liners are smudge-proof and waterproof, and they glide on easily with a smooth matte finish.

Precision is critical for hooded eyes, and both gel and liquid are great at creating fine lines. Plus, while the liquid liner is a timeless favorite, if you have hooded eyes, you may want more flexibility, which gel can provide. 

This dual-ended liner from Tarte gives users the best of both worlds with a long-wearing, smudge-proof liner with a gel pencil tip on one end and a liquid liner on the other.

The gel side is infused with Amazonian clay for even more staying power, while the liquid side has a soft precision tip for creating crisp and clean lines.

The formula is highly pigmented and lasts up to 12 hours. It’s also vegan, gluten-free, and tested by ophthalmologists and dermatologists.

HUDA BEAUTY produced the ultimate life-proof eyeliner with this dual-ended liquid and pencil eyeliner that’s an excellent choice for hooded eyelids.

The product glides on smoothly and quickly dries to a gorgeous matte finish. It’s smudge-proof, waterproof, fade-proof, and sweat-proof.

The pencil side provides gorgeous thick or thin lines with a staying power of up to eight hours. It offers the perfect balance of creamy, easy glide, and structured application, allowing you to create a clean daily look or blendable smokey goodness.

On the other end, the brush tip delivers the ideal distribution for the liner for perfect precision with bold color and a smooth matte finish that lasts up to 48 hours.

What Are Hooded Eyes?

Hooded eyes are the type of eyes that lack a visible lid space due to extra skin that hangs down over the lash line from the brow bone.

When you have hooded eyes, some eye makeup looks are more challenging because they aren’t always easily visible when you open your eyes because of skin hanging over the crease. 

You may have partially hooded eyes with just a bit of skin hanging over the crease. Or you may have fully hooded eyes where the skin folds over the crease.

Why Is Eyeliner Difficult To Apply on Hooded Eyes?

When the skin droops down from your brow bone to cover most of your lid space, you can’t see most of your eye makeup when looking straight ahead at your reflection.

This is why it’s harder to apply eyeliner. Because the hooded eyelid obscures the lid, it can be more challenging for your eyeliner to be visible as it disappears into the folds of your skin.

Plus, because of the way the eyelid is, there is also a potential transferring problem.

The skin folding that happens with hooded eyelids causes eyeliner to transfer to the upper lid or create moisture on the lid.

Qualities To Look for in Eyeliners for Hooded Eyes

There are several incredible eyeliners to choose from, so how do you pick the best eyeliner for hooded eyes?

Here are some important factors you can consider when choosing your eyeliner.

Pigmentation: Hooded eyes make it harder to see the eyeliner, so it’s important to find a product with good pigmentation and bold color. 

Hooded eyes already make it challenging to see the liner, so you don’t need to compound that by choosing a light liner or one that fades quickly.

If you have a highly pigmented color, you won’t need to use as much product, which means fewer chances for your liner to look cakey. Precision: Another important requirement for finding the best eyeliner for hooded eyes is finding one that allows you to be precise. 

Since you must be more meticulous when creating liner looks for hooded eyelids, you need a product that helps you draw clean lines carefully. Things like ergonomic tips and built-in sharpeners can help you with precise application.  Ease of use: It can be challenging to draw lines on hooded eyes, so you don’t need to make it harder by choosing a product that’s difficult to use.

Look for products that have additional ease-of-use features like angled precision tips, built-in blenders, or the like.

You’ll thank yourself when you’re in a rush and need to line your eyes in a hurry. A product that’s easy to use will save you time and ensure you get the perfect look. Longevity: Lastly, one of the most significant issues with hooded eyes is that the eyelids tend to rub together and smudge or transfer the product. Finding an eyeliner that is long-lasting, smudge-proof, and transfer-proof helps with this.

Plus, this helps when you sweat a lot or have oily skin. Longevity ensures your eyeliner doesn’t melt in the middle of the day so you won’t spend too much time touching up throughout the day.

Eyeliner Tips for Hooded Eyes

Once you have the best eyeliner for hooded eyes, the next step is to use it properly.

Here are some important tips to remember when applying eyeliner on hooded eyes.

The Right Eyeliner Shape

Applying the right kind of line and shape is essential to ensuring your eyeliner highlights your hooded eyes and flatters them.

Cat eye. Cat eye lines have the top winged out, but the bottom lid is also lined with eyeliner and connects to the winged top in a triangle shape. The result looks like an actual cat’s eye, hence the name. Floating eyeliner. Another type of eyeliner you might want to try is floating liner. This makeup hack is specifically for hooded eyes and entails lining your lid just above your upper lash line about half an inch instead of right on it. Siren eye. Siren eyes have wings just like cat eyes but elongate and lift the eyes further by lining the inner corners and lower lid, leaving a gap across the middle of your eyelid, and lightly smudging the wings outward and upward.

Eyeshadow is added to the outer crease and outer corners to the lower lid for a more elongated look. Tightline. And lastly, if you don’t want something too dark or thick, try tightlining or invisible liner. This means applying eyeliner to your inner lash line.

Tightlining can help enhance your hooded eyes, but apply it quickly and cleanly because getting teary-eyed can make it extra challenging.

Proper Application

There are a lot of good tips and tricks to enhance your liner and ensure your hooded eyes look beautiful. You’ll get the best results if you apply these along with your liner.

One is to apply your eyeshadow correctly. Since your liner needs to work with your shadow, they should look good together. 

Follow these simple tips:

Apply primer on your eyelids to prevent your makeup from getting cakey or smudged. Hooded eyes can be stubborn and mess up shadow and eyeliner. Primer will help you maintain a fresh look. Blend your eyeshadow outwards and upwards. When you blend downwards, your hooded eyes can look droopy and tired. So, when applying shadow to the outer corner, blend it upwards towards your eyebrows for an instant lift. Draw your own crease when applying eye makeup. This can give your eyes more definition and supplement your shadow and liner. Apply a highlighter on the inner corners of your eyes. This brightens your eyes and makes them appear bigger and brighter, which is perfect for hooded eyelids since they can sometimes make the eyes look shadowed and dark.

Keep Clean-Up Tools Handy

And lastly, keeping your lines clean is essential, and you won’t always get it right the first time. Practice makes perfect.

So when doing your eyeliner, keep tools to clean up readily available. Have mini cotton swab sticks and micellar water on hand to remove mistakes or fix lines as needed.

You can also use concealer to fix any minor mistakes when you’re finished.

Gorgeous Eyeliner for Hooded Eyes 

Hooded eyes may present challenges when it comes to eyeliner, but they are still gorgeous and work beautifully with the best eyeliners for hooded eyes.

So check out the wide range of long-wearing, smudge-proof, and boldly colored liners we’ve recommended here, and start practicing on your hooded lids.

It won’t be long before you’re an expert at creating gorgeous winged tips and floating liners that perfectly highlight your beautiful hooded eyes.

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