How to Trim Your Own Eyebrows, According to Experts (2024)

We all know the importance of keeping up our brows. And while most beauty treatments are best left to the pros, it's sometimes necessary to do your own maintenance in between threading and waxing appointments. Knowing how to trim your eyebrows as part of your upkeep routine can help prolong your look, not to mention keep any stubborn hairs in check.

Sure, trimming your brows may seem like an intimidating move, but fortunately, it's easier than it sounds. To prove it to you, we spoke to celebrity brow artists Joey Healy, Anastasia Soare, and Tonya Crooks, who broke down how to groom your arches so that they look clean and refined year-round.

Keep scrolling for our expert-approved guide to trimming your eyebrows like a pro.

How Often to Trim Your Eyebrows

Depending on how quickly your brow hairs grow, you will need to trim them more or less often. Healy says that as a rule of thumb, he wouldn't trim your eyebrows more than once a week. Still, he adds that some people can get away with doing it less frequently, especially if they're going for a thicker set.

How to Trim Your Eyebrows

1. Cleanse your skin. This may sound out of place, but Healy says that this will help to remove product buildup, such as sunscreen and brow gel, which can weigh brow hairs down. Plus, washing your skin will get rid of any excess oil, which could make getting a precise cut trickier.
2. Pick the right tools. Pick up a spoolie and a pair of scissors made for trimming brows. "You need high-quality, sharp scissors because even a millimeter can mean the difference between a perfect trim and a gap," explains Soare. (We recommend Joey Healy's Precision Brow Trimmer, $28, which has an ergonomic grip for total control, and ABH's Brow Trimming Scissors, $23.)
3. Brush brows up and to the side. Crooks says that people often mistakenly comb their brow hairs in an upward direction; however, doing so can result in unexpected dips and sparse areas when combed back into their natural direction. Instead, just brush the sections closest to the center of your face up, and the others in an angled, upward position toward the outer sides of the face.
4. Trim one hair at a time at a downward angle. "Don't give your brows a crew cut, which means don't trim them across in a straight line," says Healy. "Instead, cut one hair at a time in a downward angle. This keeps the edges of them looking fringy and feathery, which is more of the natural line of the eyebrow."
5. Tweeze any stray hairs. For a flawless finish, grab your tweezers and remove any hairs that fall outside of your desired brow shape. Depending on the final look you're going for, you may also want to comb through your eyebrows using a gel to set hairs.

Common Mistakes

When trimming eyebrows, one of the most common mishaps Soare sees is people who over-groom their brows and shape them into arches that don't suit their faces. The most flattering eyebrow shape is going to be tailored to the individual's bone structure, she says.

"The key to unlocking your personalized perfect brow is the ABH Golden Ratio Shaping Technique, which relies on three measurements: Brows should begin directly above the middle of your nostrils, should end where the corner of the nostril connects with the outer corner of the eye, and the highest point of the arch should connect the middle of the tip of the nose with the middle of the iris," Soare shares.

Healy says that some of the most common mistakes he sees, apart from people giving their brows crew cuts, are people who use magnifying mirrors to trim their brows. "Sometimes you overwork it and they get really short," he explains. "If you do it in a normal mirror with normal lighting, you'll have a better sense of where you're going as you style them with the scissors."