Makeup in ten minutes

Everything below assumes these and nothing else. Each one does a job no other item on the list can do.

• A tinted moisturiser or light foundation — evens the skin without needing blending time
• A concealer — for the two or three places that actually need it
• A cream blush — colour on cheeks and, if you want, lips
• A brow product — the single biggest change per second spent
• A mascara — opens the eye without any technique at all

The order matters more than the speed. Doing these out of sequence is what forces the restarts.

Minutes one and two go to skincare: moisturiser, and SPF if you are outside. Skipping this is what makes the base look dry by lunchtime, so it is not the step to cut.

Minutes three to five: tinted base pressed on with fingers or a damp sponge, then concealer only where the base did not cover. Minutes six and seven: cream blush on the cheeks, blended with the same fingers, no brush to clean afterwards.

Minutes eight to ten: brows, then mascara, then a fast press of powder in the T-zone if your skin needs it. Stop there.

Contour and highlight. Both need blending time and both look worse rushed than absent. A face with no contour reads as fresh; a face with visible unblended contour reads as unfinished.

Eyeshadow. A clean lid with mascara looks deliberate. Eyeshadow applied in forty seconds usually does not.

Full-face powder. If you are short of time, powder the T-zone only. The cheeks will look better for it and you will save a minute.

Moisturiser, because it decides how the base looks four hours from now rather than four minutes from now.

Brows, because they frame everything else. Thirty seconds of brow product changes a face more than three minutes of anything else on the list.

And blending the jawline. A visible line where foundation stops is the single most noticeable rushed-makeup mistake, and it takes five seconds to avoid — take the sponge down onto the neck.

Most of the ten minutes is decision-making. Keep exactly these five products in one small bag, separate from the rest of your collection, and the same routine takes six or seven minutes within a week.

This is also the argument for a personal makeup lesson rather than more products: an hour spent working out which five items suit your face saves those minutes every morning afterwards. That is the thing most people are actually short of.