TikTok’s Obsessed With This Blush Hack For Chiseled Cheekbones

Nothing can ruin a day at the beach — and subsequently your mood — quite like a sunburn. It’s painful, it’s itchy, and perhaps worst of all, it means that you either forgot your sunscreen (a cardinal sin) or didn’t wear a high enough SPF. Nonetheless, what could be considered every dermatologist’s worst nightmare has become the latest beauty craze on TikTok — meet the sunburn blush trend. Okay, this technique doesn’t involve giving yourself an actual sunburn but rather, recreating the flushed, sun-kissed look using strategically-placed warm-toned blush.

Also being called the “It girl” blush trend, the makeup trick has been rapidly circulating in the beauty sector of TikTok. “This blush trend is everywhere right now; this sort of flushed, faux-sunburned look,” Los Angeles-based makeup artist Courtney Hart says in recent a TikTok video. She then launches into a tutorial using MAC Glow Play Blush in the color Blush Please and a small, fluffy brush from Real Techniques.

“This look runs really high up on the cheekbone and pulls down,” Hart says as she blends the powder blush along her cheekbone where you would typically put highlighter. “...And then I like to run some across the bridge of the nose. Then, we want to softly blend it out so there are no hard edges. It just has this super natural, organic, out-in-the-sun-too-long youthful glow about it.”

“I think the reason why it’s so popular and looks so cute is because this is where we naturally flush when we like, go for a jog or something,” Hart adds. “We’re just mimicking the natural sunlight.”

TikTok user Dionna May put her own spin on the trend by mimicking the “sunburned” filter that’s available on the app, applying both a red and orange eyeshadow to achieve the same effect. “You have to get precise with this,” she says, pinching her blush brush to make it thinner as she layers the pigments over her cheeks and nose. The result is not only a spot-on recreation of the filter but looks just like an actual sunburn as well.

Ahead, check out some of the best products to help you achieve the sunburn blush trend and stock up for summer.

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