I Tried 5 Viral TikTok Beauty Hacks So You Don't Have To

Experimenting with a beauty routine during a lockdown is pretty low stakes: If it doesn’t come out the way you planned, no one besides you and your vanity need to know.

Unless you share it on TikTok , the place more and more people are flocking to these days to pass time, put their creativity on display, laugh at silly things and yes, learn beauty hacks. 

Search the term #beautyhack on TikTok and you’ll find yourself on a landing page that has over 1 billion with a B views . But only some rise through  the ranks to viral status. The first viral beauty hack I saw on the app was the bathrobe braid. User @bacardibri123 claimed you could achieve no-heat beach waves by weaving your hair into a bathrobe belt in a French braid motion and sleeping on it overnight. 

I was intrigued and, due to our current situation, more willing to take the risk. But if you’re going to have your hair done, you might as well have your makeup done too, right? 

Behold, five viral TikTok beauty trends that I tried and that you should, too. 

1. Bathrobe Braid Hack 

I was pretty skeptical of this one, despite seeing the results on my feed and having used the overnight braid method to add waves to my hair before. TikTok user @bacardibri12 has very long, thick hair. I do not. My hair has a natural wave, so I blow-dried it straight before French braiding it into the belt. In the morning I definitely had a cool wave going with no heat involved but I could have achieved something slightly better and much faster with my curling iron. So, depending on what is more important to you, I’d say this one is worth a shot. 

2. Eyeshadow Eyebrow Trick 

My brows veer on the Eugene Levy side of things, so the two-step process in this hack from @soprimp   covering them in dark eyeshadow and shaping them with a makeup wipe was a little intimidating. Also, I found that most of my eyeshadows are sparkly, so you need to find yourself a matte shadow. The color was pretty intense, and I ended up going through with my brush and spending a good chunk of time wiping eyeshadow off my face. But after I got used to them, I thought my brows looked pretty good. 

3. A Very Complicated Long-Lasting Foundation Technique

Instead of using just primer before foundation, this hack, posted by @jaridamat , implores you to: moisturize (I used Embroylisse lait-creme concentrate ), use translucent powder (I used Laura Mercier ) then setting spray (Urban Decay forever ) and let it dry, then primer, THEN foundation (I used Pat McGrath for both). My end result was a little cake-ier than I would typically like, but as I wore it throughout the day it definitely lasted and looked good on-screen, which is where we live now. I would do this again MAYBE for a wedding and maybe not on a humid day.

4. Lip Plumper

This was, in my opinion, the easiest and most successful hack. Perhaps it’s not such a hack as it is a trick makeup artists use all the time, but over-lining the top and bottom lip and shading the corners, filling in with lipstick and adding a lighter shade to the middle of the bottom lip left me with decidedly larger-looking lips. I used a MAC nude/pink liner and two nude cushion lipstick shades from The Creme Shop . All the better to eat this homemade sourdough with, my dear.

5. Winged Eyeliner Hack

This one, er, didn’t go so well. I had high hopes for my hooded eyes and this eyeliner tutorial from @elliemakeupartist , which involves drawing three lines on the lid and coloring them in with liner. The first eye was a complete disaster, but I got closer to the mirror for the second eye and it came out a bit better. To be fair, I later noticed that the page also has a hack for winged eyeliner on hooded eyes , but by then my face of makeup was already complete. I was ready to, once again, sit on the couch. 

In the end, I added bronzer and mascara to finish off the look and I was ready to ... clean my bathroom of all the products I had used trying these beauty hacks.