CREDIT: BENEFITCOSMETICS.COM
Benefit's eye primer, Stay Don't Stray, helps eye shadow and concealer last all day.

One of the biggest challenges women (and some men) face with their makeup is achieving that long-wear hold from their eye makeup. The eye shadows and eyeliners seem to either fade or flake off as the day progresses. This challenge seems to become even more difficult in the winter, since the air is so dry that the eyelids can become a bit chapped. Luckily there are products and techniques that will help you get a longer wear out of your eye makeup.

The first way to get more out of your eye makeup is to make sure your skin is healthy, moisturized and properly prepped. As we all know, skin often seems to take a turn for the worse in the winter, so you want to make sure you have a moisturizing eye cream that isn't too heavy (or else you will clog up the area and produce those white dots called milia). Some decent eye creams are Dior Hydra Life, Lancôme's Génifique and La Roche-Posay Hydraphase Intense Eyes. If you find that the skin around your eye area needs a little bit more repair, using a serum as well as an eye cream will help speed up the results.

Once your skin is fully prepped, an eye primer is key for not only a long hold but for increased pigmentation quality as well. However, you have to make sure you are using the right type of primer for your skin type or else you can actually cause increased flaking. If you have a drier skin type, then you will want to avoid any heavy eye primers that have a flesh tone as they can cause a lot of texture on the eyelid, which prevents the eye makeup from going on smoothly and causes it to flake off. If you have an oilier skin type, then you will want to avoid any primers that have a high glycerin or oil content as this will just cause the eye makeup to smear.

Once you have your skin prepped and the proper eye primer on, it's now time to apply your eye makeup. One tip to applying eye shadow is by "packing it on" rather than swiping it across the eyelid. This will build up greater colour intensity and will also reduce any flakiness that can appear on drier eyelids.

Another key to having your eye makeup last longer is by using an eye shadow that is highly pigmented, but this usually means it has a higher price point. Brands such as MAC, Make Up For Ever and Nars are some of the highest pigmented eye shadows on the market. That being said, if you have properly prepped and primed your eyelids, any eye shadow should last you the entire day and will stay, not stray.