Your festival-inspired Midsummer makeup looks sorted

Calling all free-spirited beauties: Midsummer is almost upon us and it’s the perfect excuse to draw inspiration from this season’s beauty looks. The only golden rule is to embrace the celebratory spirit of the day with easy application and playful accents that elevate your look to festival fresh. Ahead are a few simple-to-achieve makeup tricks.

Midsummer is about flaunting fresh, sun-kissed skin. So swap a heavy, pore-clogging blanket of foundation for a 'skindation', or skin tint, which is essentially a hybrid of skincare and foundation. Skindation's appeal lies in the sweet spot coverage that it delivers – a smidgen more than a tinted moisturiser but it's still sheer enough to let freckles have their day.

Our favourite? Hermes Plein Air Complexion Balm, a balm-like cream with a fine veil of pigment. This ‘skin-on-skin’ effect “conceals yet reveals the beauty of a face in the open air,” according to Menehould de Bazelaire, Hermès’ director of cultural heritage. Oily skin types may prefer Lumene's Invisible Illumination, which has a cooling gel-like texture courtesy of Pure Arctic Spring Water and Nordic Algae.

Minuscule particles of glittery plastic, which find their way into ocean and our water supply, seem to have replaced microbes as the new nemesis to our sea life. Luckily, we're not the only ones who think the only shimmery things in the sea should be a shell's mother-of-pearl finish. Glitter Eco Lovers Eco Glitter in Disco Queen uses different sized chunks of multi-coloured glitter made from biodegradable plant-based materials. All of which gives the environment a shinier future, too.

Conventional wisdom recommends strategic blusher placement on the apples of your cheeks, where you naturally flush. But this is a party after all, where surely convention and caution are thrown to the wind? So why not tap into blusher's full potential to be fun and flirtatious "with a saturated application that reaches onto the temples and hairline," says Danish-born make-up artist, Kirsten Kjaer Weis. "It oozes a much-needed playfulness and joy,” she adds.

Better yet, choose a multipurpose cream blusher that doubles up as lipstick and eyeshadow. Then smoosh the pigment into your skin with your fingers for an insouciant, art school finish.

It's almost like makeup artist Gucci Westman's infamous bronzer tip was developed specifically for Midsummer – conjuring up childhood memories spent in nature at the family summer house. Westman recommends applying bronzer where young children catch the sun outdoors by “brushing horizontally under the eyes and across the cheeks rather than following the line of your cheekbones,” she advises. Finish with sweep of bronzer across the bridge of the nose and around the hairline.

Westman’s product of choice is her Westman Atelier Beauty Butter Powder Bronzer in Coup de Soleil but Chanel's new Les Beiges Oversize Health Glow Sun-Kissed Powder buffed into the skin with the Oversize Kabuki Brush creates a softly luminous effect, too.

The humid days of summer aren't the ideal environment for a razor-sharp cut crease. So embrace the heat and a more laid-back makeup vibe with smudged-out eyeliner in a vibrant hue. Gel eyeliner is your ally as it's even more malleable in the heat for a on-point smoky eye. Copenhagen-based makeup artist Marie Thomsen recommends using a small soft brush, "lining along the top and bottom lash lines and then taking a cotton swab to smoke it out". For added intensity, press a powder eyeshadow in the same shade over the top, pushing it as close to the lashes as possible.