Have you ever noticed someone's eyebrows looking a little blue? Maybe gray? Or even a strange shade of purple?

Whenever I see this, I can't help but wonder two things.

After years of working with permanent makeup, it's something I find myself wondering more often than you might think.

Because sometimes, the person wearing those brows doesn't seem to realize just how much the color has changed.

When brown isn't brown anymore

Think about it.

Someone gets their eyebrows permanently enhanced. They're thrilled! Maybe they barely had eyebrows before. Maybe they spent years drawing them on every morning.

Now they have brows. They're happy. And understandably so.

But months turn into years.

That once-beautiful brown can gradually take on a cooler, grayish, bluish, or even purplish appearance.

And here's where things get interesting.

They've looked at those brows every single day. The change may have happened so gradually that they never really stopped to question it.

But to someone like me?

Sometimes it's like those eyebrows have flashing neon signs saying:

I can't help but notice!

Not because I'm walking around critiquing people's eyebrows. It's just that after years of studying faces, color, and permanent makeup, certain things practically jump out at you.

Meanwhile, the person wearing those brows might be perfectly happy, completely unaware of what I'm seeing.

So, what happened to the brown?

Well, permanent makeup lives in your skin, and pigment doesn't always look the same as time goes by.

There are several reasons colors can change, but I'm not going to turn this into a science lesson. That's not really what I want to talk about today.

If you're curious about older permanent makeup and why it needs careful evaluation, we explain more on our Previous Brow Work page.

What interests me more is something I've noticed throughout my career.

And that reminds me of something.

The one thing we choose to see

Being a barber for many years taught me something interesting about how people look at themselves.

I had clients who could sit in my chair, get a great haircut, a beautifully blended fade, everything looking sharp.

But you know what some of them were most concerned about?

“Is my beard line straight?”

That's it!

Forget the fade. Forget the blend. Forget the rest of the haircut.

If that beard line and mustache looked straight, they were happy.

And I see something very similar with eyebrows.

For some people, it's all about the shape.

Are they even? Do they have a nice arch? Do they finally have brows where there were hardly any before?

If those boxes are checked, they're satisfied.

But what about the color?

Does that color actually complement their face? Has it changed over time? Does it still look like what they originally wanted?

Sometimes those questions don't even enter the conversation.

And I'm not saying people shouldn't be happy with their brows. Of course they should!

I'm simply saying there's a difference between being happy with something and really seeing everything about it.

Take another look

Now, I'm not suggesting everyone needs to run to the nearest mirror and start panicking about their eyebrows!

But if you've had permanent makeup for a while, especially several years, here's something worth trying.

Take a good look at your brows in natural daylight.

And this time, don't just look at the shape.

Don't just check whether they're even.

Look at the actual color.

Is it still the brown you remember?

Or has it become something else?

Of course, lighting can play tricks on us, natural brow hairs can be gray, and not every cool-toned brow is a problem.

But sometimes a fresh look reveals something we've simply gotten used to seeing.

One last thought

We spend so much time thinking about how our brows are going to look when they're first done.

But how often do we think about what they'll look like years later?

That's worth considering before choosing permanent makeup, not just afterward.

Because the excitement of finally having eyebrows can be wonderful. But that excitement shouldn't be the only thing we use to judge the result.

Let me ask you something. When you picture a natural brow, what do you see?

If you said hair strokes, you are not alone. I hear it all the time. People talk to me and tell me they want it to look natural, and then they add that they don’t want a soft fill. They want the hair strokes. Because to them, hair strokes are natural.

I understand why. Somewhere along the way, visible hair strokes became the proof of natural. If you can see every little hair, it must look real.

Nobody looks at a brow that closely

Think about it. When was the last time someone told you, “I love the way your hair strokes are flowing”? Or you told someone else? Never.

What people say is that you look great. You look rested. Something about your face is just right, and they can’t quite put their finger on it. That’s the point.

So how did strokes become the proof of natural? The industry built that idea. It handed women two choices, hair strokes or a makeup fill, and made it feel like those were the only two options. They are not.

The tool changed. The idea didn’t.

Years after the hand blade, machine methods like nano brows showed up. New tool. Same goal: hair strokes.

So the whole conversation became who can draw them better. Notice what never got asked. Are strokes even the right goal? When everyone is competing on how real the hair looks, nobody stops to ask the only question that matters: how does this sit on your face?

The finesse of the shape, the taste level, how the color heals years from now. You can’t see any of that in a fresh photo. And it matters most.

So what does make a brow good?

Four questions to ask yourself.

Say yes to all four, and it looks natural. With or without a single drawn hair.

Here’s what I do instead

At Masters At Werk, we design the brow around your face, your features and your life. Soft. Tasteful. Never heavy, never blocky. Don’t take my word for it. Look at our healed results.

A fair word on technique

I’m not saying hair strokes are wrong. Done well, they can look lovely.

So next time you look in the mirror, try this. Look at the whole face, not the lines. And even if you can still see them, chances are they have already blurred and softened into something that looks nothing like it did at first.

Then look at the color. Did you ever wonder about the color? What looks better? Lines on your brows that no one can see? Or brows that have shifted to a gray or blue that everyone notices? You be the judge.