With your wedding day fast approaching, you sure must be on your toes to maintain that natural sheen & glow on your face. From including more miracle foods in your diet to following a stern workout regimen to taking various pre-bridal beauty treatments, there’s so much that you need to keep a track of to get that flawless skin. But to achieve some extra lustre, a perfect highlighter is all you need to invest in. It’s one beauty tool that can instantly take your bridal makeup from drab to fab. Just a light swipe on your cheekbones, inner corners of eyes & your cupid bow’s and you’re all set to flaunt a gorgeous, luminous face at your wedding.

But how do you decide which highlighter is the most suitable for you? Powders, liquids or gels? And what brand, for that matter? Well, we’ve got some recommendations from the experts themselves. We asked some of the renowned makeup artists to share with us the best highlighters for brides & the prime areas they should apply one. And it turned out to be pretty helpful. Drive through and take note!

Makeup Artists Recommend Best Highlighters & How to use them

1. Dolly you up by Shradha

Her Favorite Picks: For me, forerunning thought behind using a highlighter on any of my brides is that I want it to always look like the face is glowing from within. More so, it just looks just as gorgeous in person as it does when professionally photographed. My personal favourite has to be the Champagne Pop by Becca Cosmetics. The gold undertone of this product complements Indian skin tones beautifully and is by far the best highlighter I’ve used.

Prime Areas to highlight (For Beginner Brides): As the name suggests, a highlighter should be used to highlight your best features. Having said that, there is no hard and fast rule about the prime areas where it should be applied. For instance, if you have a broad nose you can skip adding highlighter down the centre of your nose. Makeup is what you make of it and I highly advocate the fact that every person should use every product based on their face. The common areas on which a highlighter is normally used are the tops of the cheekbones, the centre of the nose, the brow bone, the cupids bow & the chin!

2. Misha Vig

Her Favorite Picks: 'MAC Soft and Gentle' is one of my favourite highlighters for my brides. It is a luxurious velvet-soft powder with a high-frost metallic finish. It smoothens & adds buffed-up highlights to cheeks or an overall ultra-deluxe polish to the face. Now coming on to the shade, the Mac mineralize skin finish in shade soft and gentle is a very beautiful peachy champagne shade. The highlighter has powdered shimmers present in it. But the shimmers are neither chunky nor too loud. They are perfectly subtle shimmers. The highlighter is very well pigmented, hence in one swipe you get a good amount of product on the cheeks. It doesn’t feel chalky and powdery at all. It just blends beautifully on the skin. This shade will flatter all skin tones be it fair, medium or dusky. However, I would like to advise you to try the product first before buying it.

Becca champagne pop is also my favourite nowadays as the shade is neither too cool nor warm-toned so it literally can make any skin tone look radiant. The powder is super fine yet lushly dense so you can really pack it on your brush.

Prime Areas to highlight (For Beginner Brides): Strobing or highlighting typically calls for highlighting on the tops of the cheekbones, the inner corner of the eye, the bridge and the tip of the nose, the cupid's bow, your chin, your brow bones and under your eyebrows, and under your contour. Basically, bathe your face in highlight and you have accomplished the strobing trend. Highlighting does create a lifted appearance, especially when applied to the cheeks and above or below (or both) the brow bones.

3. Ojas Rajani

Her Favorite Picks: The rose gold highlighting palette by Huda Beauty is magic as it creates a soft glow on the face without looking unnatural and gives flawless radiance and comes in four colours to suit every bride's dream. It works beautifully on all skin types without looking too metallic and also does not give a problem when shot with a flashlight camera.

Prime Areas to highlight (For Beginner Brides): Highlighters can be used on the apples of the cheeks if the face is slim or it can make the face look round and plumpy. So, for a fuller face or a heavy jawline and big cheeks use only on the cheekbones sparingly and on the brow bone as well as the tip of the nose and chin. You can also highlight your arms as well as collar bone or a sexy back, can be highlighted for a backless dress.

Highlighters in cream form can be only used on a clear complexion but on problem skin or mature skin powder highlighters are the best.

4. Pooja Khurana

Her Favorite Picks: I prefer fine highlighters that give a soft finish to make the skin look iridescent, rather than like flashing bulbs. It should give that smooth wet sheen that adds to the natural glow of the skin. Laura Mercier and limited edition M.A.C highlighters are my current favourites!

Prime Areas to highlight (For Beginner Brides): Always use a highlighter on the highest points of your face - top of the cheekbones, around the temples, the tip of the nose, above the cupid's bow, and the apple of the chin. Make sure there are no large open pores or uneven surfaces in the area you want to apply the highlighter - the sheen will certainly highlight the craters or acne and that isn't ideal. You can also apply highlighter along the nose, as long as there are no open pores or oiliness.

5. Pratishtha Arora

Her Favorite Picks: My most favourite highlighter is Amrezy from Anastasia Beverly Hills. It’s a powder highlighter which gives kind of a wet highlighter/dewy look to the face without making the areas look blotchy. My second most favourite highlighter, that I always recommend to my brides is wet and wild highlighter in precious pearl. It’s like Amrezy with a slight difference in shade, but a major difference in price, lol. And yes, they are my top picks also because they both have a shade that goes with almost every skin tone; they are the perfect gold, neither too yellow nor too ivory.

Prime Areas to highlight (For Beginner Brides): Highlighters can be added to all those parts of the face where you can feel the high point of each bone, like the cheekbone, highest point of the forehead (which is between the brows, just slightly higher), brow bone area, bridge of the nose, high point of the chin, cupid of the lip. But one should always remember to avoid any of these areas where there are open pores or acne bumps, as the highlighter would eventually highlight the pores and bumps as well.

6. Shahid Naar

His Favorite Picks: I've been using Becca, Huda, Saleha, Kiko, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Tarte, Too Faced, MAC, Sephora, Fenty, etc. However, Amrezy by Anastasia Beverly Hills is one of the favourites I use for my brides. My personal preference is to do subtle makeup and ABH Amrezy perfectly gives me the subtle sheen for morning brides and with double strokes amazing eye-blinding sheen for evening brides. It merges well with the skin giving a seamless finish, not giving it fake glow or cakey look. It is, of course, cruelty-free with an amazing light gold illuminating powder. Amrezy is also extremely smooth and weightless. On top of that, it works pretty well on any skin tone, so I would highly recommend it to all the brides.

Prime Areas to highlight (For beginner brides): A highlighter can be used on cheekbones, on the tip and down the bridge of your nose, on the inner areas of your eyes, above your cupid's bow and arch of your eyebrows. You can use a little in the centre of your forehead, it'll create a more contoured face after applying bronzer to your temples. One can also highlight the centre of the chin which will help to get a more contoured appearance. Beginner brides can use a highlighter as mentioned above, with practise they'll get better in technique.

7. Simran Takkar

Her Favorite Picks: My favourite highlighter is Laura Mercier. I am completely in love with this one because it glides on very naturally avoiding the cakey effect on the face. 

Prime Areas to highlight (For Beginner Brides): Cheekbones and lower lashlines are the two key areas where one should use a highlighter.

8. Varsha Gidwani

Her Favorite Picks: Just like every makeup category, highlighters come in different forms too; powder, liquid & creams. However, selecting the right formula depends as per one’s skin texture (on the part one wants to highlight). Here are some of my favourites:

1) Dior Backstage Highlighter

2) Huda Beauty Golden Sands

3) Anastasia Amrezy Highlighter

4) Becca Liquid Highlighters

5) Mac Strobe Cream

Prime Areas to highlight (For beginner brides): Highlighters are applied to the high points of one’s face.

Which is your favourite highlighter? Tell us in the comments below.

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