How to airbrush away all your wrinkles. Smart cosmetics that use tricks of the light to hide your flaws.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could airbrush your face in real life? Blur wrinkles, lighten dark circles and put a soft-focus filter over everything?

Make-up has always been able to give us a helping hand, but a new generation of smart cosmetics contain ingredients that reflect and diffuse light, making it so easy to conceal and correct.

1. Start with primer

If you’re going to buy only one new product, make it a primer. These multi-purpose wonders moisturize skin, as well as creating a flawless canvas that anchors foundation.

Try Laura Mercier’s Radiance Foundation Primer for a pearly, soft effect or L’Oreal’s Pure Light Primer, part of the Lumi Magique light-reflecting range, designed to make skin glow.

2. Flawless foundation

The newest foundations put light-reflecting technology centre stage, with impressive results. Try Estee Lauder’s Invisible Fluid Make-up, which uses pigments and molecules to bounce light.

To achieve a flawless finish for any foundation, apply with Urban Decay’s Optical Blurring Brush .

The rounded tip and close-packed bristles buff and polish the product into the skin, rather than just layering it on.

3. Don’t forget concealer

YSL’s Touche Eclat and its light-reflecting particles have been disguising bags for years, but it’s worth looking at less pricey options using similar technology.

Nurture’s Illuminating Touch Treatment Concealer contains UV filters to protect the area, and Boots No 7 Instant Radiance is, say its many fans, as good as the YSL version. Brush on, then use your finger to gently pat it into place.

If you use it on blemishes, be sure to add a dab of face powder on top or the highlighting concealer will draw attention to them.

4. Metallic eyeliner

Light-reflecting pigments in eyeliner sound unnecessary, but make-up innovator Terry de Gunzburg, creator of Touche Eclat, has come up with a lower-lash liner that will make your eyes look huge.

Opaline Flash is a pale metallic pink kohl that glides on easily and gently bounces light to open up the eye.

5. Shimmering eye shadow

Eye shadows that play with light are frequently glittery or frosted, so, for anyone older than 25, can feel too young or old-fashioned.

However, Bobbi Brown’s Long-Wear Cream Shadows deliver shimmer without glitter.

Try Slate or Galaxy, and then use the highlighter end of Soap & Glory’s Arch de Triumph under the brow and in the inner corner of the eyes for a subtle effect that lifts the eye.

6. Perfect your pout

Glosses are the conventional go-to for boosting lips as they reflect more light than lipsticks. But they can look a bit teenage.

New generation lippies, such as Dior Addict Extreme, offer serious shine and strong, lasting color, so you get the same effect without a gloopy gloss.

7. Finishing touches

Powder is used to mattify, but a dewy finish is more youthful – there’s no danger of that powdery-old-lady look.

The latest products offer the best of both worlds with silica-based formulations that moisturize skin.

Try Youngblood Hydrating Mineral Perfecting Powder. For a night out, try a finish with more impact, such as LKC Miracle Glo Perfecting Glotion.