Brow fronts for close-set eyes: what I look at

Is it the gap or the front? How I tell them apart

I'm Jisun, the owner of London Brow in Seoul. When someone tells me their eyebrows are too close together, I do not reach for the tweezers. I look at the shape of each front first. A front that begins with a vertical, square edge pulls attention to the middle of the face. A front that begins with a few light hairs and builds gradually does the opposite, even when it starts in exactly the same place. With close-set eyes, the square edge is usually the real problem, and the gap only looks narrow because of it.

You can test this in a mirror. Hold a finger or a pencil over the inner third of one brow and look at the eye below it. If the eye suddenly seems to have more room, the front shape is doing the crowding. Then look closely at the inner edge: do the first hairs grow upward and thin out, or do they stop in a straight line? That straight line is often left by years of filling the front with a flat pencil edge, and it can be softened without taking anything away.

Why removing hair is not my first idea

Hair between the brows is the easiest thing to remove and the hardest thing to get back. Once the gap is widened, the inner edge of each front is wherever the removal stopped, and if that edge is still square, the eyes still read as close. The face now has a wider gap and the same crowded feeling, which is the worst of both. I would rather keep the hairs and change what the edge looks like.

There is also a practical reason. The hairs at the front are the material that hair strokes blend into. Microblading-style hair strokes look natural because they sit between real hairs and follow their direction. If the front has been cleared, there is nothing for the strokes to join, and the front becomes a drawn shape sitting on bare skin. That is why I ask people to stop plucking or trimming for a while before the consultation. I need to see what grows there before deciding whether any of it should go.

The three things I change at the front instead

The first is direction. Front strokes drawn upward, following the natural growth, make the start of the brow read as a soft beginning rather than a wall. The second is density: the very first strokes are placed lightly and spaced a little wider, so the inner edge fades in rather than switching on. The third is the lower line of the front. If the lower edge of the front sits low and heavy, it closes the space above the inner eye; raising that edge a touch, where the hairs allow, opens it again.

None of this moves the brow start outward by much. It changes how the eye reads the start. On some faces I will also leave the gap slightly narrower than a textbook would suggest, because a soft, upward front close to the nose looks more natural on that face than a cleared gap with hard edges. How far each of these goes depends on your own hairs and the rest of your face, so I treat them as options to show you in pencil rather than fixed rules.

How to check at home and what to say in the consultation

Take a straight-on photo in daylight with no brow makeup and your face relaxed. Zoom in on the inner edge of each brow and decide which word fits: square, or tapered. Then look at the lower edge of the front and note whether it sits lower than the middle of the brow. Finally, think about what you notice when you look at your face: is it the gap between the brows, or the fronts themselves? Those are different complaints and they get different answers.

Consultations at London Brow are translation-assisted over WhatsApp, so a short message is enough: 'My eyes are close-set and my brows feel too close together. I think the inner edges are square. I would like to keep my hairs if possible.' In the studio, ask me to draw the front two ways with a pencil, once as it is now and once softened, and look at the eyes rather than the brows when you compare. If the eyes look more open with the hairs still there, we have our answer.

Common questions