How Douyin Makeup Took Over TikTok

TikTok has taught us many things: how to perfect a cut crease, why you don’t ever need to substitute your primer with lube, and that looking “cold” can be cute. Of the countless makeup tips and tricks that have emerged from the app, one that has maintained an active (and growing) fan base is #douyinmakeup. 

Douyin makeup is actually an umbrella term for a broad makeup style, defined by soft and ethereal looks that give a doll-like appearance. The name comes from the social media app, Douyin, which ByteDance created in 2016 and is exclusive to China. While, like with any beauty trend, the look varies depending on who creates it, three aspects remain near constants: sparkly shadow and subtle liner that opens up the eyes, heavily flushed cheeks, and a diffused lip. A lot of the techniques that become trends are depicted via illustrated charts with placement guides. This makes it easier for users to adapt to their own faces, which likely helped with its virality. 

Here’s a little background on Douyin and TikTok. Two years after ByteDance launched Douyin, the company created a separate but nearly identical app to Douyin for an international audience and named it TikTok. However, the name of the trend is a bit misleading: Yes, many of these looks come from creators on Douyin, butsome are sourced from other social media apps, namely: Xiaohongshu (also exclusive to China), Instagram, and Pinterest, according to TikToker Vivian Hoang, who often uses Douyin makeup techniques in her own content.  

When Hoang first saw Douyin makeup trending on TikTok, she was excited because she believes the techniques are better catered to East Asian features. “Once Douyin makeup became the new hot topic within the TikTok beauty community, I jumped onto the trend to see how the techniques will look on my epicanthic, hooded eyes,” she tells Allure. “I fell in love with how flattering Douyin looked. I no longer felt insecure about not having large, double-lidded eyes.”

Hoang says the eyes are often the focus of Douyin makeup. Shimmery or glittery pigments on the lids or even below the waterline are common among a lot of these looks; Hoang demonstrates one version of this — a beginner-friendly swipe of champagne shadow with silver glitter accents — in the video below. 

It’s the emphasis on the eyes that drew in Los Angeles-based TikToker Chloe Paredes. A trend both she and Hoang love is manhua lashes (sometimes referred to as manga lashes by creators) which are long, wispy lashes that look like individual clusters of hair rather than fanned out pieces. 

The look is meant to mimic the lashes of many manhua, or Chinese comic book, characters. The key to the look involves individual lashes, glue, and a steady hand. From there, you just apply the individual lashes in the scattered formation, and then you’ll look similar to Paredes’ final look in the video below. 

Though the makeup generally looks like it was applied with the lightest of touches, contouring is still common in the Douyin style, and it’s not exclusive to just the cheeks and jawline. Eye contouring is huge — it’s popular to define the aegyo sal, which is the area of fat right underneath your waterline. Paredes loves adding concealer around her aegyo-sal for a “younger” or more “innocent” appearance. Hoang sculpts out her aegyo-sal and highlights it with a silvery shimmer in the TikTok below. 

Though the eye makeup is arguably what makes a look immediately identifiable as Douyin, the lips don’t go completely ignored. A Douyin makeup look is often finished with a full and pouty lip, typically in nude, pink, or reddish shades. Creators tend to opt for a more blurred effect by using more sheer lip tints and stains or blotting a traditional lipstick to diffuse the color. 

And flushed cheeks are a must as Paredes shows in the video above. How they get so rosy is what’s interesting: One technique, which was labeled “Douyin blush trend,” became immensely popular among creators. The specific trend involves applying blush in a sideways V shape on the chin, nose, and temples. The technique is created to Instagram user @hezzzw_jv whose photo has been all over the app. You can see people’s re-creation of the look on TikTok hashtag #douyinblushtrend. 

Since Douyin covers such a wide variety of looks, simply searching Douyin makeup on TikTok or elsewhere might bring up too much inspiration.. To make it easier to decide what to try first, we present a few more Douyin makeup tutorials, tricks, and looks that we have been loving on TikTok lately. 

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