Lighting and mirrors for makeup

Household bulbs in Georgia are commonly warm white, around 2700K to 3000K. That light adds yellow to everything, which cancels out yellow in a foundation that is too yellow for you. Step outside, and the same base reads orange.

Daylight sits around 5000K to 6500K and is neutral. It shows tone differences honestly, which is why it is the only light worth matching foundation in.

Cool white office lighting, around 4000K, sits between the two and adds a slight blue cast that makes skin look flatter and paler than it is. Makeup done to look right under it is usually too warm everywhere else.

• 2700–3000K warm white — hides yellow, flatters, lies about shade
• 4000K cool white — flattens skin, tempts you to over-apply blush
• 5000–6500K daylight — neutral, shows the truth, the standard to work in

Light from directly overhead — which is where almost every ceiling fixture is — casts shadows into the eye sockets and under the cheekbones and nose. You then fill those shadows with concealer that was never needed, and in flat light later the face looks patchy and pale in exactly those places.

Light from below, such as a phone screen or a desk lamp pointed up, does the opposite and is equally misleading.

The light you want is frontal and even, at roughly the height of your own face. A window is the simplest version of this. A ring light or two lamps placed either side of the mirror is the deliberate version.

You do not need equipment. You need a chair placed so that you face a window, with the window in front of you and not behind you. Light from behind puts your whole face in shadow and is the most common home setup.

If there is no usable window, two identical lamps with daylight-temperature bulbs, one on each side at face height, will do the same job. One lamp on one side creates a face that is correctly made up on one half only — a genuinely common outcome.

Check the bulb before buying anything else. A 5000K bulb costs a few lari and changes more than any product on the table.

A magnifying mirror is a tool for two jobs: brows and eyeliner. It is not a mirror for judging a face, because nobody will ever look at you from four centimetres away.

Everything applied while magnified gets over-corrected — more concealer, sharper edges, heavier brows — because you are working on a version of your face that does not exist at conversation distance.

The habit worth building is to step back to about an arm's length and look again before deciding anything is finished. Most corrections people make at a magnifying mirror are undone by that one step backwards.

At weddings, because the getting-ready room is usually a hotel room with warm bulbs and a single window, and the ceremony is outdoors in full daylight. That is the largest colour-temperature jump in a normal day, and it is why a professional will move you to the window before starting.

And in photographs, because a camera flash is close to daylight temperature and far brighter than any room. Makeup that was built under warm light to look correct will photograph warm — the base too orange, the blush too strong.