25 Times Royals Fell Victim To Eyebrow Blindness

Even the royal family can suffer from eyebrow blindness. The colloquial term refers to the concept of becoming over-familiar with one's own brows, thus failing to see if one's grooming style is actually flattering on the face. The expression gained popularity on TikTok as people shared past photos of themselves where their brows were completely unflattering. This usually occurs when someone jumps on a brow trend without considering whether or not it works with one's unique facial tones, proportions, and face structure. This leads to eyebrow mistakes you don't even know you're making. 

Eyebrow blindness doesn't just apply to one specific brow fad. It can encompass a whole range of different brow styles, from very thin eyebrows to thick brows darkened and enhanced with brow products. It includes everything from over-plucking to over-filling, but the bottom line is that the brows end up stealing the show instead of subtly enhancing one's face. 

The royal family isn't above these fails. From frighteningly skinny brows to overly-dark brows, everyone from Queen Camilla to Princess Catherine and Meghan Markle have made mistakes over the years. In some cases, the brow mistakes happened because it can be a challenge to tackle changes in your eyebrows as you age. Hair gets thinner and it lightens, meaning what worked in your younger years doesn't anymore. Other issues arose as certain royals tried to jump on mercurial brow trends; these don't flatter everyone, and even members of the firm have had to learn this the hard way. 

Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, struggled with brow blindness when she attended Thanksgiving Service at Westminster Abbey on May 8, 2025, in London, England. She had clearly filled in her brows with product to give them fullness. Unfortunately, she didn't taper out the ends of her brows and the result was that her brows cut off at the high arch point. They were exaggeratedly lifted, giving her a permanent look of surprise. Thankfully, her festive blue fascinator stole the show, and so she can only hope people didn't notice.

Queen Camilla has a long history of makeup mistakes, including brow blindness, a phenomenon she has suffered from many times. This was painfully evident when she attended the 80th Anniversary of VE Day on May 8, 2025, in London, England. She filled in her brows with a dark brown brow product and they ended up looking shockingly darker than her light blond hair. As a result, her brows looked artificially thick and weighed down her features instead of lifting them. That heavy blush didn't help either. 

Ah yes, the super-skinny brow look. This '90s brow trend was actually harmful to eyebrows because over-tweezing eyebrows can permanently lead to a loss of hair growth. Princess Catherine showed that she fell for this dated trend when she skied with Prince William in Switzerland on March 30, 2005. Thankfully, Catherine didn't do damage to her brow growth because later images show that her brow hair grew back. But these skinny brows aren't her best look, and fuller eyebrows look much more youthful and flattering on the princess.

Even the impeccable Princess Diana made brow mistakes every now and then. There was one such instance in particular when she visited Barmouth, Wales, in November 1982. While her brown coat and hat were absolutely darling, her brows lacked a flattering shape. They just suddenly went from thick to thin without any natural taper toward the tail. Thick brows are great, but they do need to gradually recede from the thickness of the front in order to look their most flattering.

Meghan Markle has made some epic makeup mistakes, and this often includes heavy, overwhelming brows. This was painfully evident when she attended the Alliance for Children's Rights on March 19, 2026, in Beverly Hills, California. Meghan arrived with brows that were distractingly thick and blockish near the bridge of her nose. While she did a nice job of tapering out her eyebrows, the front of Meghan's brows were much too wide for her face. She would have been better off using a lighter hand when applying her brow products to avoid this.

Sarah Ferguson has a long list of her worst makeup mistakes, and brows are one area that she consistently struggles with. This was woefully evident when she attended the Royal Ascot on June 20, 2025, in Ascot, England. Ferguson's brows were both extremely thin and excessively dark. Fuller brows increase facial contrast, which is why they can often look more youthful. While there's a fine line — and it's wise not to over-fill brows — a little bit more volume to Ferguson's brows would have been much more flattering. 

Even natural brunettes have to be careful with over-filling their brows in too dark of a shade. When Princess Eugenie attended the Vogue World: London 2023 event at Theatre Royal Drury Lane on September 14, 2023, her brows were much too heavy and dark. The rule of thumb for brunettes is that brows should be one to two shades lighter than one's natural hair color to avoid a harsh finish. An ash-toned brown brow product is best, as it's softer on the face. Eugenie would have been better off with a slightly lighter brow product. 

The dreaded "Sharpie brow" refers to a makeup blunder where a person's eyebrows are so dark that they look like they were drawn on with a Sharpie pen. When Meghan Markle spoke at The Archewell Foundation Parents' Summit on October 10, 2023, in New York City, her brows were so dark and severely drawn on that they had a cartoon-villain shape to them. While Meghan naturally has dark hair, her brows still need to be a few shades lighter so as to avoid overwhelming her face. 

Perhaps one of the worst cases of eyebrow blindness in the royal family was when Princess Beatrice attended the Wimbledon Tennis Championships on July 9, 2024, in London, England. Beatrice's brows were several shades darker than her hair color; she went for a dark, chocolate brown brow product that jarred harshly with her strawberry blond hair color. Secondly, she applied brow product thickly all across her brows, rather than using the product to create a natural taper. The final result made her brows look cartoonishly dark and heavy on her face.

While eyebrows should be sisters, not twins, there's still an expectation that there's some uniformity to the brow shape. This amplifies the effect of flattering symmetry on the face. Not so for Sarah Ferguson when she attended the funeral of Katharine, Duchess of Kent, at Westminster Cathedral on September 16, 2025, in London, England. One of Ferguson's brows was much more arched than the other. And it wasn't just an issue of her making a facial expression in a single photo; many of the photos from this event show Ferguson's mismatched brow shapes.

Princess Catherine started lightening her hair in the summer of 2025. Fans started to notice blonder highlights that brightened her traditional brunette tones. While this is perfectly fine, Catherine didn't adapt her brow products to match her new, lighter shade, and this was very evident when she visited the Colchester Hospital on July 2, 2025, in Colchester, England. Brow shades really need to be one to two shades lighter than the color of a person's hair. Instead, Catherine used a darker, brunette brow product that made her eyebrows look too pronounced. 

The skinny brow trend struck again, and this time it was Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, who exhibited this overly-tweezed brow style. Sophie was attending an event to celebrate the 100th birthday of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in July 2000. Since Sophie's hair is blond, her overly-thin blond brows became almost invisible with all the plucking, and there was little left to frame her face or add expression. Thankfully, she moved on from this trend in later years and grew out her brows so that they were fuller and more flattering.

Princess Catherine seemed to go through a bumpy brow and hair transition in the summer of 2025. She had started dying her hair a lighter shade, but her brow grooming hadn't quite caught up with her new hair hue. When Catherine attended a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace on May 20, 2025, her brows were much too dark, showing a clear case of eyebrow blindness. Her eyebrows looked harsh and heavy because they were simply too dark and over-filled for her features. 

For mature brows, the best tactic is to focus on creating a soft, diffused shape by using light, feather-like strokes in an ash-grey or a very light taupe shade to avoid creating a harsh contrast against white hair. However, Queen Camilla missed this note when she attended the Ascot Races on July 26, 2025. Instead of opting for a lighter brow tone, she went for a much darker brown shade that contrasted with her hair color. Not only that, but her brows were very thin and so the final effect of overly-skinny, dark brows looked severe.

Queen Camilla would do well to make a brow appointment with an expert who could offer some guidance about brow styling for mature women. When she visited the Quirinale Palace in Rome, Italy, on April 8, 2025, Camilla used a brow product in a warm, chocolate brown and applied it liberally. The shade didn't suit the overall coloring of her features and it made her brows stand out artificially, creating a comic-effect of overly-large, excessively dark eyebrows.

Princess Diana had a moment of brow blindness when she attended the Red Cross Headquarters in Washington in June 1997. Her brows were very thick and she had filled them in with a very warm brown product that had red undertones. For blond women, the most flattering brow product tones tend to be cool, ashy shades or a cool taupe tone. This gives brows a natural fulness without appearing distracting. Unfortunately, in this instance, Diana opted for the wrong color and it gave her brows an unflattering finish. 

Eyebrow blindness can show up when a person looses sight of the importance of brows as a structure to frame the face. This was the case for Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, when she visited the Royal Albert Hall on December 1, 2022, in London. She suffered a double makeup mistake from a lack of attention to her brows and excessive use of shimmery shadow. Her already-light brows got lost in her glittery eyeshadow and she lacked a defining boundary between her brows and her eyelids.

Princess Catherine fell victim to a major brow mistake on Remembrance Sunday with shockingly dark eyebrows. While attending the event on November 9, 2025, in London, England, Catherine arrived with blocky, heavily-filled brows that were too bold for her delicate features. One of the biggest appeals of Catherine's style is its timelessness, and so it was unfortunate she fell for the heavy brow fad when she looks much better with lighter, softer eyebrows. She can only thank her lucky stars that her blue hat did a lot of the heavy lifting by covering them.

Yet again, Queen Camilla suffered from eyebrow blindness when she attended The King's Parade in Jersey, England, on July 15, 2024. She chose a dark, brown brow product that clashed with her white hair. She also made her arches the thickest point of her brows; for more flattering brow styles, the front of the brows should be the thickest point, and the arches should be slightly thinner, leading to a final tapering off of the brow. Unfortunately, Camilla did the reverse, and as a result, her brows looked heavy and unnatural. 

Meghan Markle went in too strong at the front of her brows. When she spoke at the SXSW 2024 Conference on March 8, 2024, in Austin, Texas, the Duchess of Sussex showed some brow blindness with top-heavy eyebrows that were made much too dark by an excess of brow product. While she did a nice job of tapering her brows, the front of them looked too blocky. Had she gone in with a softer hand, the brow product would have framed her face in a softer way and her brows would have looked more flattering. 

Back before she became a queen, Camilla Parker-Bowles attended a party at The Ritz in London in November 2002. At this event, her brows looked sparse and undefined, with no cohesion to them. At this point in her life, Camilla's hair was a very light blond with grey undertones. With such light hair, some attention to her brows would have added defining shape. Unfortunately, there was no structured border and this can make a person look older in some cases, which is what happened to Camilla here.

Meghan Markle made some brow mistakes while in Abuja, Nigeria, on May 10, 2024. There's no doubt that Meghan loves a bold, statement brow and while this can be lovely, in this instance, she clearly suffered from over-filled brows. The beginnings of her brows, especially, were too bold and blockish for her face. Since Meghan wears her hair parted down the middle and keeps her hair away from her face, her forehead and brows become a big focal point, making overly-bold brows that much more noticeable.

Princess Eugenie suffered from eyebrow blindness all the way back in June 2013, and this was evident when she attended the Epsom Derby in Epsom, England. While brow blindness is typically associated with over-filled, blocky brows, the term can also apply to excessively thin brows. Eugenie clearly fell into the over-plucking trend that was popular in the early 2000s as a signature Y2K look. As is clear from later photos, Eugenie looks best when her brows are a little fuller, adding more volume and a youthful lift to her face.

Eyebrow blindness can also refer to unkempt brows, where the person doesn't realize that ignoring their brows makes their overall look suffer. This was the case for Princess Beatrice when she attended the Christmas Day service in Sandringham, England on December 25, 2008. To be fair, it wasn't until the mid-2010s that eyebrows became so important, thanks to the rise of YouTube makeup tutorials. Nonetheless, Beatrice's eyebrows looked patchy and unkempt, and a little brow attention would have done wonders for her Christmas look. 

Meghan Markle loves a bold brow and while this style often works for her, she can suffer from brow blindness every now and again. When she and Prince Harry attended the Invictus Games on September 13, 2023, in Dusseldorf, Germany, Meghan opted for heavy makeup with brows that were too dark and exaggeratedly arched. Her eyebrows had an overly-strong beginning point, and instead of framing her beautiful features, her brows dominated the look and gave the appearance of being stamped on.