You likely know by now that sleep quality is critically important. Lost sleep and increased sleep debt can contribute to issues with generally increased stress, heart disease, and other negative impacts. However, while you should be trying to improve your sleep hygiene by doing things like reducing blue light usage for an hour before bed and striving for regular exercise, sometimes the morning alarm clock goes off and you just haven’t been able to get enough sleep. In these cases, here are a few quick tips to do before your daytime activities to trick people into thinking you slept much more than you actually did.

1. Try Moisturizer Instead of Foundation

Foundation can often look cakey and thick on tired skin. Tired skin is often also dry skin, which means that your normal foundation just might not be a great option when you didn’t get the recovery time you need from your eight hours per night. Instead of your typical foundation, try opting for a tinted moisturizer for light, gentle coverage.

2. Add a White or Nude Liner to Your Waterline

A nude or white eyeliner can make your eyes appear slightly wider, which can help offset the fact that your eyes might be a little more closed than they usually are. Sufficient sleep tends to keep your eyes a little further open, and this liner trick can help you do the job.

3. Opt for a Neutral Eye Look

It can be tempting to cover up your tired eyes with a bright, flashy eyeshadow look, but you actually want to direct attention away from your eyes. With a bright eye look, people will be paying more attention to your eyes. This means they’ll actually be more likely to notice your late-night issues. Avoid bright colors or glitters when you’re tired.

4. Choose a Bright Lipstick

Instead of a bright-eye look, choose a bright lipstick look instead. This further directs attention away from your eyes and steers it toward your lips.

5. Curl Your Lashes

An eyelash curler can be an incredibly beneficial tool if you’re trying to hide issues with your sleep habits. In a similar vein as the white or nude liner trick, curling your lashes creates an illusion that your eyes are wider, making it seem like you got more sufficient sleep than you did.

6. Bring Life Back to Your Skin With Blush

Tired skin often looks much duller than normal, with a significant amount of the redness drained from your face. While you definitely don’t want to go overboard, adding a little bit more blush all across your face, including all over the apples of your cheeks and potentially down your nose.

7. Color Correct With Concealer

Color correction is one important part of correcting from lost sleep. Because your skin is missing the general recovery time necessary to look its top shape, you’ll likely see certain tell-tale signs of tired skin. Green concealer can cancel out redness from irritation. Orange and pink concealer can help hide dark circles, especially on warm skin tones. And purple concealer can help brighten yellow spots. A tiny bit of lipstick under the eyes before your tinted moisturizer is a great fix for dark circles.

8. Find an Especially Glowing Highlighter

There’s a reason that people often talk about “glowing skin” when discussing healthy-looking skin. An especially glowy highlighter can help you bring some brightness back to your skin. If you only skip out on a few hours of sleep every week or so, an extra layer of your normal highlighter could do the trick. But if you find yourself especially sleepy during many daytime activities, consider investing in a new one.

9. Reduce Under-eye Puffiness Directly

There are many options available to reduce under-eye puffiness, including cold spoons, ice cubes, and ice rollers. You can also try taking a cool shower in the morning. Generally, cold temperatures do a good job of soothing irritation and redness that can pop up in your skin after a short night’s sleep.

Mask Restlessness Directly With These Tips

There’s no substitute for eight hours of sleep, but not everyone can get the right amount of sleep at night every time they hop in bed. While sleep deprivation can cause tired skin and make your face look a little drearier, there are makeup tips you can use to mask those signs of tiredness. If covering up sleepless nights comes as easy to you as breathing, you might be interested in checking out the cosmetology program at Ogle School to turn those skills into a career.