These Are The Best Fall Makeup Ideas For Blondes

While summer beauty offered a playful palette of bright lipsticks, bold shadows and vivid liners, fall beauty looks are often deeper and darker in comparison. All those classic autumn staples like darker lips and shadowed eyes can create issues finding the perfect fall makeup for blondes. If you're of fair skin and hair (like me), all those sophisticated looks can feel a bit too dramatic for your coloring. I find that dark purples, blues, and blacks can often look harsh and unbalanced against my flaxen strands. Since these deep shades really pop on pale skin, you run the risk of always looking like you're headed for a fancy party — even if you just wanted to add a little eyeshadow for the work day.

Being that the overall mood for fall is more intense than the former seasons, it can be hard to master that come-hither look, without doing too done up in the process. I embrace my natural hair and skin tones, but sometimes I worry my autumnal smoky eye is just making me look clownish or washed out.

So what's the trick for rocking fall makeup as a blonde? I asked experts to spill their tips — and think I found my perfect fall face in the process

1. A Luminous Foundation Is Key

All the best beauty looks start with clean and polished skin, so using makeup to create a glowing and dewy complexion is always recommended, no matter what your skin or hair shade may be. "While you could endlessly contour and highlight, mixing together a hydrating foundation with a makeup luminizer helps create a soft glow,” Vanessa Ungaro, expert makeup and hair artist at LAUREN + VANESSA, tells me over email. Two steps to radiant skin? I'm in.

For that pristine sheen, mixing together some foundation and illuminator wasn’t a hard challenge IRL, especially since the Hard Candy Sheer Glow All The Way Face & Body Illuminator ($8) and the Too Faced Born This Way Foundation ($39) meshed together well to form a sheer, luminizing result.

A good hack to remember when my skin’s definitely duller than doornail, this foundation combination definitely brought instant radiance to my face. Plus, this makeup mix didn’t leave my complexion looking shiny or processed.

2. Lip Stains Make Bold Colors Easier

While wine and berry lipsticks are on surely on the fall forecast, sometimes these lip colors can look absolutely dreadful on blondes, being that the dark pigments can look too strong against certain skin tones. To avoid a rough and unnatural finish, Jamie Greenberg, celebrity makeup artist and host of “Pretty little Pranksters” on Michelle Phan’s ICON Network, suggests you use a stain. "It creates the same cool, vampy effect, without the usual thick application," she explains.

Being that my skin tone is on the warm side, using a plum or burgundy stain seemed like a plausible idea, but I was still pretty scared of true plum colors. However, the Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tar: Matte In NSFW ($18) eased my worries, as this burgundy-plum shade offered the coverage of a lipstick with the staying power of a stain.

Similarly, the Tarte LipSurgence skintuitive lip tint in energy noir ($24) gave me a more matte, yet powerful plum that lasts like a stain. By choosing warm colors that flattered my skin tone, my overall appearance looked more put together and polished, rather than clownish or harsh.

3. Copper Colors Are Your Best Bet For Smoky Eyes

Like deep berry lips, eye makeup also turns to the dark side once the time fall rolls around. But while a vampy lip and seductive eye combination may look good on the runways, this combination can totally look really harsh IRL, especially if you're a blonde. Greenberg suggests trying brown and copper tones, instead of brushing on the usual black shadows. “This looks great on blondes, and is not as harsh,” she says.

I’ll never be a smoky eye master, so instead of focusing on creases and contours, I simply dusted on some copper and golden shades found inside the Lancome Audacity Eyeshadow Palette ($68). To create a golden feline flick, I used the Stila Got Inked Cushion Eye Liner in Smoky Quartz Ink ($28) to give my eyes some added coppery sparkle.

Being a bottle blonde with light brown eyes, I really liked how the much more subtle copper eye gave me that sultry edge. For the first time, I felt totally confident about pairing a bold lip with serious shadow!

4. Use A Sunless Tanner Or Bronzer

Although luminous skin and berry lips are all the rage this season, achieving that sun kissed look all year round never goes out of style. And while it may be tempting to slap on the thickest tanning mousse you can find, Hack advises that a more natural sun kissed glow can be done easily with the help of a sunless tanner or bronzer. “Use a bronzer or sunless tanner that gives just enough color to your face and décolleté to keep your face glowing,” she says. This also helped balance out all those bold colors I'd suddenly become so fond of.

I usually steer clear of sunless tanners anyway, so I've always been on Team Bronzer. I'm especially fond of bronzing palettes, like the Too Faced Little Black Book Of Bronzers ($49), that give me loads of color options, so I can find the perfect shade. And while bronze and blonde seems to be an inseparable beauty duo, always be sure to go for a sunkissed glow by focuses on spots where the sun naturally hits your face, rather than dusting all over.

While I still believe that blondes can pull off any makeup of their choosing, being aware of your skin's undertones can help find a look you love more quickly. Now, I'm off to buy some more lip stains.

Images: Courtney Leiva (10)