Witch Makeup: 5 Looks Step by Step and Why Witches Went Green

Witch Makeup: 5 Looks Step by Step and Why Witches Went Green

Witch makeup comes down to one decision: green skin or no green skin. Below are five looks, from a 25-minute classic green face to a 10-minute hedge witch (the easy witch makeup option), with steps, the pigments to check near your eyes and what changes on a beard. Plan for the photo too: on SubhSandesh, 48.3% of shared pages are opened on a phone and each page averages 11.1 views, so most people judge your face small and on a screen.

The green face is younger than it looks. L. Frank Baum's 1900 witch had one eye and no green skin; the green arrived with MGM's 1939 Technicolor film.

Where does the green witch face come from?

Witch makeup is any face paint or cosmetic look that says "witch" before the hat goes on: a coloured skin tone, sharpened features, or folk details such as freckles and leaves. The green version is the best known, and its starting point can be traced on paper.

In Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), the Wicked Witch of the West "had but one eye", and when Toto bites her she does not bleed, because her blood had "dried up many years before". The only green-skinned people in the book are the citizens of the Emerald City, who "had greenish skins".

The green face was a 1939 film decision. Photoplay Studies, a 1939–1940 study guide for schools now held by the Library of Congress, says in its Wizard of Oz issue that make-up chief Jack Dawn gave Margaret Hamilton "a green face and a long, sharp metal nose".

In the same issue, cinematographer Harold Rosson writes that she "wore black, with hands and face a bright green", usually kept before a dark grey background. That fixes where the modern image came from; it does not prove nobody painted a witch green before 1939.

Rosson's set-up still works for a phone photo. A green face reads strongest against a plain dark wall, lit from the front.

5 witch makeup looks, step by step

Each look gives a first-attempt time (our estimate), the kit, the steps and one watch-out. They assume you can already lay a base, blend and set, so none of that is repeated here.

1. Classic green witch (1939 style)

• Time: about 25 minutes.
• Kit: green cream or water-activated face paint, black cream liner, a grey-brown powder, setting powder.
• Steps: paint green over the face, ears, neck and the backs of both hands, because Hamilton's hands were green too, and stop 1 cm short of the lash line. Shade under the cheekbones and down both sides of the nose in grey-brown so the nose reads longer and sharper. Draw brows about 5 mm higher and more angled than your own, then set.
• Watch-out: green hands mark everything they touch, so set them twice and carry wipes.

2. Emerald glam witch

• Time: about 20 minutes.
• Kit: an emerald eyeshadow labelled for eye use, black gel liner, gold shimmer, a black-cherry lipstick.
• Steps: pack emerald across the lid up to the crease. Draw a long black wing, then three short downward flicks under the outer lower lashes like broom bristles. Touch gold into the inner corners, leave the skin in its own tone and finish with black-cherry lips.
• Watch-out: this is the look where the pigment list below matters most, because the green sits on the lid itself.

3. Soft green, Wicked-style

• Time: about 15 minutes.
• Kit: green cream paint, your usual moisturiser, a taupe eyeshadow, a brown brow pencil, clear gloss.
• Steps: on the back of your hand, mix one part green cream with two parts moisturiser so freckles show through. Sponge it thinly over face and neck, keep the lids taupe and the brows natural, and finish with gloss: the softer green the Wicked musical and its 2024 and 2025 films made famous again.
• Watch-out: a sheer green catches on dry patches, so moisturise 10 minutes before you start.

4. Good witch, book or film

• Time: about 15 minutes.
• Kit: a pearl highlighter, rose blush, a white or pale pink shimmer shadow, cosmetic glitter.
• Steps: pick a source. Baum's Glinda has hair of "a rich red" in "flowing ringlets", a pure white dress and blue eyes; the film's Good Witch, Billie Burke, wore a headdress bright enough that Rosson lit around it. Highlight cheekbones and brow bone, sweep shimmer over the lid, put rose blush high and press three tiny glitter stars at one outer corner.
• Watch-out: use glitter sold as a cosmetic, never craft glitter, and keep loose sparkle off the lash line.

5. Hedge witch, the easy option

• Time: about 10 minutes.
• Kit: bronzer, a brown brow pencil, brown eyeshadow, a dark green eye pencil.
• Steps: the name is recent: Wiktionary dates "hedge witch" in the solitary-witchcraft sense to around the 1990s, possibly popularised by Rae Beth's 1990 book Hedge Witch. Warm the cheeks and nose with bronzer as if you spent the day outdoors, press brown dots across the nose and blot them, and smudge brown shadow along the lower lashes. Draw a sprig of three small leaves at one temple in the green pencil.
• Watch-out: wear real herbs and flowers in your hair or hat, not glued to skin.

Which witch look fits your time and skin?

This table compares the five looks on time, where the green goes and how they behave on facial hair. The minutes are our first-attempt estimates, not measured averages.

Two of the five put green on the lid or within a centimetre of it. For those two, the pigment name on the label matters more than the brand on the box.

Green and black pigments near your eyes

A colour approved for skin is not automatically approved for eyelids. The FDA's summary of colour additives (content current as of 16 December 2025) lists three greens for cosmetics including the eye area: chromium oxide greens (CI 77288), chromium hydroxide green (CI 77289) and, since 1994, D&C Green No. 5 (CI 61570).

D&C Green No. 6 (CI 61565) and D&C Green No. 8 are listed for externally applied cosmetics only, and FD&C Green No. 3 (CI 42053) for cosmetics generally, so none of those three belongs on your lids. For black, D&C Black No. 2 (carbon black, CI 77266, approved 2004) is listed for eyeliner, eye shadow and mascara, and iron oxides, including black iron oxide (CI 77499), for cosmetics generally including the eye area.

Approval is not the same as purity. In a 2021 study of 94 eyeshadows sold in Poland (Pawlaczyk and colleagues, Molecules), lead, strontium, barium and bismuth turned up in every sample, and a pink shadow made for children reached almost 4 mg/kg of cadmium against a 0.5 mg/kg limit.

The single highest barium result, 2,154 mg/kg, was in a green shadow, yet colour was the one factor with no statistically significant difference. Buy from sellers that print the full ingredient list, and read the CI numbers.

Green witch makeup on beards and stubble

Facial hair changes coverage, transfer and removal. It does not rule out a green witch.

• Timing: as a rule of thumb, shave or trim about 12 hours before painting, so freshly cut skin is not raw under the colour.
• Stubble of 2 to 5 days: stipple cream paint with a sponge instead of swiping, which drags pigment onto the hair and leaves the skin speckled. Press the setting powder in rather than brushing it.
• A full beard: paint the skin up to the beard line and leave the hair its own colour. A green face over a dark beard reads as deliberate.
• Removal: let your cleanser sit for a minute, comb through with a fine comb, rinse in lukewarm water and repeat once. If the skin stings, stop.

Showing your witch face to the one person who missed it

The person you most want to see the finished face may be in another city. Two SubhSandesh Halloween pages are built for one person, not for a party.

The interactive Halloween card with a Boo License takes about five minutes and holds up to six photos. Its recipient brews a potion from 3–5 ingredients you list, and the 1080×1920 Boo License at the end lets you dress them in one of eight costumes, witch included.

The cinematic Halloween page with a voice note takes about 10 minutes, fits up to 12 photos and a 60-second voice note, and adds an unlock time and a reply box of up to 280 characters. Pick it if you want to tell the 1939 green-face story in your own voice.

Across all SubhSandesh pages, 90.9% of those started are published and shared. If Halloween is not the occasion, browse every SubhSandesh template for the one that fits.

When witch makeup is the wrong choice

Full green paint is a poor idea on eczema, broken skin or a fresh shave, and contact-lens wearers should keep every pigment off the lash line. The 10-minute hedge witch, or a hat and cloak over bare skin, does the job with less risk.

A greeting page loses too. In the same room your painted face beats a link, and a 1080×1920 licence carries none of the texture of real paint. Both pages are English-only, one-person greetings, not party invitations.

Sources

• L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), Project Gutenberg eBook #55.
• Photoplay Studies, vol. 5 (1939–1940), The Wizard of Oz issue, Library of Congress copy on the Internet Archive.
• US Food and Drug Administration, Summary of Color Additives for Use in the United States, content current as of 16 December 2025.
• Pawlaczyk A and colleagues, "Determination of Metallic Impurities by ICP-MS Technique in Eyeshadows Purchased in Poland. Part I", Molecules, November 2021.
• Wiktionary, "hedge witch", consulted October 2026.