How to Get Hunter Eyes: What Actually Works and What Doesn't
You can't fully get hunter eyes without surgery — the core of the look (eye depth, brow bone, and canthal tilt) is set by your bone structure. What you can change is everything around it: how much eyelid shows, how puffy your eye area looks, and how your brows frame your eyes. That gets most people noticeably closer to the look.
If you're not sure what the term covers, start with our guide to hunter eyes — it breaks down the five traits and how to check yours. This guide is about the next question: which of those traits you can actually move, and which popular methods are a waste of time. For an overall read on how your features work together, take an attractiveness test.
Can You Get Hunter Eyes?
Yes and no. You can't get "true" hunter eyes naturally, because eye depth, the brow ridge, and canthal tilt depend on bone and on where the eyelid tendons attach. But two of the five traits — visible upper eyelid and brow position — depend partly on soft tissue and habits, so you can shift how your eye area reads without surgery.
Face shape is under strong genetic control — that's why identical twins look so alike (Tsagkrasoulis et al., 2017). Here's how that plays out trait by trait:
Trait | Can you change it? | What actually moves it |
|---|---|---|
Deep-set eyes | Not the bone | Less puffiness makes the eye look a bit more set back |
Low, prominent brow ridge | Bone: no. Brows: yes | Grooming and a relaxed forehead make brows sit and read lower |
Little visible upper eyelid | Partly | Not raising your brows, sleep, less fluid retention |
Neutral or positive canthal tilt | Not without surgery | Makeup can fake it; nothing else moves the tendon |
Long, narrow eye shape | Mostly fixed | A relaxed gaze instead of a wide-eyed one |
Canthal tilt is the one people try hardest to change, and it's the one that moves least. We cover the details in can you change your canthal tilt.
If you're a teenager: your face is still developing, so how your eyes look now isn't final. In a study of 540 people, men aged 10–19 had a canthal tilt about 1.6° lower on average than men in their 20s, and the angle stayed fairly stable after 20 (Shao et al., 2024). Don't judge your eye area as finished at 15.
How to Get Hunter Eyes Naturally
Getting hunter eyes naturally comes down to soft tissue and habits: stop raising your eyebrows, groom your brows lower and straighter, cut puffiness, and lose excess face fat if you carry it. None of these changes bone, but together they reduce visible eyelid and make the brow sit closer to the eye.
1. Stop raising your eyebrows
This is the biggest change most people can make, and it costs nothing. The frontalis — the forehead muscle — lifts the eyebrows (Clinical Ophthalmology, 2020). Many people keep it slightly engaged all day without noticing, which pulls the brows up and shows more upper eyelid — the "prey eyes" look.
How to check and fix it:
Look for forehead lines in a relaxed selfie. Lines when you think your face is neutral mean the brows are working.
Let the forehead go slack — the brows should drop a few millimeters on their own.
Don't swap it for a squint or a frown. Squeezing the eyes or pulling the brows together is tension too, and it reads as angry, not intense.
Repeat it as a habit check a few times a day until a relaxed brow becomes your default.
2. Groom your brows lower and straighter
Your brow bone is fixed, but your brow hair isn't. Brows that are full and fairly straight read lower and heavier, which hides more lid.
Remove strays above the brow, not below — plucking the underside raises the brow line.
Avoid a high, sharp arch. It opens the eye area, the opposite of the hunter look.
Brush the hairs flat or slightly outward with clear brow gel instead of straight up.
Fill gaps with a pencil or powder close to your hair color if your brows are sparse.
3. Get rid of puffiness
Puffy eyes look rounder and more open, so they work against the hunter look. In one study, people photographed after 31 hours without sleep were rated as having more hanging eyelids and more swollen eyes than after a normal night (Sundelin et al., 2013).
What helps, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology:
Enough sleep — most experts recommend 7–9 hours.
Less salt, and fewer drinks right before bed — both help cut overnight fluid retention.
Less alcohol — it's one of the listed contributors to eye bags.
Sleeping with your head slightly raised, so fluid doesn't settle around your eyes overnight.
A cool compress for a few minutes, with very gentle pressure — a quick fix that lasts a few hours.
Treating allergies if your eyes are often itchy or swollen.
4. Lose excess face fat — if you have it
If you carry extra weight, some of it sits in the face, and it softens the area around the eyes. Losing it can make the brow look more prominent and the eyes look more set back. Research shows weight change has to be fairly substantial before other people notice it in your face (University of Toronto, 2015).
This only works if you have fat to lose. If you're already lean, getting leaner won't build a brow ridge — and crash dieting or dehydrating yourself for a sharper look backfires on your skin, your energy, and your health.
5. Fake it for photos
Most "hunter eyes" photos online are partly angle and expression:
Camera at eye level or slightly above, chin slightly down. Head tilt changes how much lid and brow show (Vaca et al., 2021).
Light from above or the side, so the brow casts a soft shadow over the eyes.
A relaxed, slightly lowered gaze — what models call smizing — instead of eyes wide open.
Face tape for a temporary lift. Small clear tapes at the temples or behind the hairline pull the outer corners up and back — a common trick behind "fox eye" and "hunter eye" photos. The lift lasts only while the tape is on, so use it for the shoot, not all day. Keep it off the eyelids and peel it off slowly.
Makeup can go further: liner and shadow can lengthen the eye and lift the outer corner. See the step-by-step makeup for hunter eyes in our main guide.
Hunter Eyes Exercises: Do They Work?
Hunter eyes exercises can't give you hunter eyes. They work the orbicularis oculi, the muscle that closes the eyelids, but no exercise moves the eye socket, the brow bone, or the tendon at the outer corner. At best, they train a relaxed or slightly narrowed expression — which is most of what changes in "30 days of hunter eye exercises" videos.
Facial exercises are among the most shared looksmaxxing methods, and the eye area gets more of them than any other part of the face. Here's what each one actually does.
What the orbicularis oculi actually does
The orbicularis oculi is a ring-shaped muscle around each eye. Its main job is to close the eyelids, and it also helps drain tears (StatPearls, NIH).
Its outer (orbital) part handles forceful closure — squinting and screwing your eyes shut.
Its inner (palpebral) part handles normal blinking.
It's also the muscle behind crow's feet. Dermatologists inject Botox into it to smooth the wrinkles it creates around the eyes.
No study has tested whether training this muscle changes how much eyelid shows at rest. And it attaches to soft tissue and tendons, so even a stronger orbicularis oculi doesn't reshape the eye socket or lift the outer corner.
The UUDD exercise
UUDD stands for Up, Up, Down, Down: raise your eyebrows, look up with only your eyes, lower your brows, then bring your gaze back to the front. It's the most shared hunter eyes exercise online.
What it really does is help you notice the difference between raised and relaxed brows. That makes it a decent habit drill for step 1 above — not a muscle workout that reshapes anything.
Squinting exercises
Squinting exercises (often called orbicularis oculi training) have you narrow your eyes by lifting the lower lid, hold for a few seconds, and repeat in sets. The claim is that a stronger lower lid will sit higher on its own.
There's no research behind that claim. What squinting practice can do is make you better at holding a narrowed gaze when you choose to — for a photo, say. Held all the time, it looks tense, and it repeatedly creases the skin at the outer corner, where crow's feet form.
Eyelid pulling
Eyelid pulling means stretching the skin at the outer corner or the upper lid with your fingers, supposedly to create a hood or lift the corner. It can't move the canthal tendon, and the result is gone the moment you let go.
It's also the one method on this list that can backfire. The American Academy of Ophthalmology advises avoiding excessive eyelid rubbing, and long-term eye rubbing can weaken the cornea enough to cause keratoconus (AAO). Repeated pulling and pressing around the eyes isn't worth that risk.
What face yoga research shows
The best-known study on facial exercise followed middle-aged women who did a 32-exercise face yoga program for 30 minutes a day, then every other day, for 20 weeks. Blinded dermatologists rated their upper and lower cheeks as fuller at the end (Alam et al., 2018).
That's real, but limited:
The change was in the cheeks, not the eye shape.
The participants were women aged 40 to 65, not the young men most hunter eyes content targets.
It was a small pilot study with no control group.
So the strongest evidence for facial exercise says it may add a little cheek volume over months. It says nothing about creating hunter eyes.
What the methods promise vs. what they do
Method | What it promises | What actually happens | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
UUDD exercise | Lower, relaxed brows | Helps you notice and drop raised brows | None |
Squinting exercises | A higher lower lid, narrower eyes | A practiced narrowed gaze, no proven change at rest | More creasing at the outer corner |
Eyelid pulling | A hood or a lifted outer corner | Nothing that lasts | Irritation; eye rubbing is linked to keratoconus |
Face yoga | A sharper eye area | Fuller cheeks in one small study of women 40–65 | Low |
What changes in "30 days" videos
The popular challenge videos where someone does hunter eye exercises for a week or a month often do show a difference. It usually comes from things that have nothing to do with muscle:
Expression. By day 30, they've practiced holding relaxed brows and a lowered gaze for the camera.
Angle and light. A slightly higher camera and top light make the brow cast more shadow.
Puffiness. A morning photo vs. an afternoon one can look like a different eye area.
None of that is fake — it's the same toolkit as the natural steps above. It just isn't proof that the exercises changed your eye shape.
What Doesn't Work or Isn't Safe
Mewing, bone smashing, taping and DIY procedures don't give you hunter eyes. None of them moves the eye socket, the brow bone, or the tendon at the outer corner, and some of them can injure you.
Mewing. Mewing — resting your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth — is promoted for midface growth. No study has tested whether it changes the eye area, and the hunter eyes claims come from before-and-after photos, not research.
Bone smashing. Tapping or hitting your face to "build" the brow ridge or cheekbones can't add bone where you want it. It can bruise and fracture the bones around the eye. Don't do it.
Taping as a long-term fix. Wearing tape every day won't train the outer corner to stay lifted — the tendon and bone underneath don't change, so the eye goes back as soon as the tape comes off.
DIY procedures. Cutting the skin at the corner of the eye, inserting threads, or injecting anything at home risks infection, scarring and damage to the eyelid, which protects the eye and keeps it moist. Anything that changes the eyelid belongs with a specialist.
How Long Does It Take to Get Hunter Eyes?
How long it takes depends on what you change. Makeup, brow gel and photo tricks work right away, brow and sleep habits show within days to weeks, and eye depth, the brow ridge and canthal tilt don't change at all without surgery.
Timeframe | What can change | How |
|---|---|---|
Instantly | How your eyes look in a photo | Makeup, brow gel, face tape, camera angle |
1 week | Puffiness, how often you raise your brows | Sleep, less salt and alcohol, brow habit checks |
1–3 months | Brow fullness, face fat if you carry extra | Brow grooming and growth, gradual weight loss |
Permanently | Canthal tilt, eye shape, brow bone | Surgery only |
That's why "hunter eyes in 1 week" is possible only as a look, not as a change in eye shape.
Can Surgery Give You Hunter Eyes?
Surgery can change some hunter eyes traits, but it's real eyelid and orbit surgery with real risks, not a quick cosmetic tweak. Procedures marketed for the look include lateral canthoplasty or canthopexy, upper eyelid surgery, and brow bone implants.
Lateral canthoplasty and canthopexy reshape or reposition the outer corner of the eye. Documented risks include an outward-turning lower lid (ectropion), scarring, asymmetry, a misaligned corner and trouble closing the eye (EyeWiki, American Academy of Ophthalmology).
Upper eyelid surgery removes skin or fat above the eye. Dry eye is a known complication of cosmetic eyelid surgery (Zhang et al., 2020).
Brow bone or orbital rim implants add projection above the eye. They are bone-level surgery, not a filler.
More lift isn't more attractive either. In a study with 2,081 participants, digitally raising the outer corner of the eye lowered attractiveness ratings (Kempa et al., 2025).
If you're considering eye-area surgery, talk to a board-certified oculoplastic surgeon — a specialist in the eyelids and orbit — and go in with realistic expectations.
FAQ
Can you get hunter eyes by squinting?
Only for a moment. Squinting narrows your eyes while you hold it, but there's no evidence that squinting exercises change how your eyes look at rest. Held all the time, it looks tense rather than intense.
Can women get hunter eyes?
Yes. The anatomy is the same, so women can have the same traits. On women the look is often called "fox eyes" or "cat eyes," and makeup is the most common way to create it.
Are hunter eyes just hooded eyes?
No. Hooding hides the upper lid, which is one of the five traits, but hooded eyes can come with any canthal tilt and eye depth. Our hunter eyes guide compares them side by side.
Does mewing give you hunter eyes?
No study shows that it does. Mewing is about tongue posture, and claims that it reshapes the eye socket in adults aren't backed by research.
Can you get hunter eyes in a week?
Not permanently. In a week you can cut puffiness, stop raising your brows and groom them lower — enough to change how your eyes look in photos, but not your eye shape.
Sources
Tsagkrasoulis D et al. Heritability maps of human face morphology through large-scale automated three-dimensional phenotyping. Scientific Reports, 2017.
Shao J et al. Automatic measurement and comparison of normal eyelid contour by age and gender using image-based deep learning. Ophthalmology Science, 2024.
Eyebrow elevation as a prognostic factor for success of frontalis suspension in severe congenital ptosis. Clinical Ophthalmology, 2020.
Sundelin T et al. Cues of fatigue: effects of sleep deprivation on facial appearance. Sleep, 2013.
American Academy of Ophthalmology. How to get rid of bags under the eyes. 2025.
University of Toronto. Psychologists pinpoint change in weight required to look healthier and more attractive. 2015.
Vaca EE et al. The influence of sagittal head tilt on periorbital appearance. Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum, 2021.
Tong J et al. Anatomy, head and neck: orbicularis oculi muscle. StatPearls, NIH, 2024.
American Academy of Ophthalmology. Is it OK to rub your eyes?
Alam M et al. Association of facial exercise with the appearance of aging. JAMA Dermatology, 2018.
American Academy of Ophthalmology. Canthoplasty. EyeWiki.
Zhang SY, Yan Y, Fu Y. Cosmetic blepharoplasty and dry eye disease: a review of the incidence, clinical manifestations, mechanisms and prevention. International Journal of Ophthalmology, 2020.
Kempa et al. Understanding the impact of eyebrow and lateral canthal height on the perception of character traits. Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery, 2025.
