Few beauty tasks are trickier than touching up your eyebrows at home [1]. We've all been there, tweezers in hand, staring into a magnifying mirror, ready to take action. But a lot is at stake here: one wrong move and you risk overplucking [2], leaving a gap in your eyebrow hair, and otherwise just messing up your brow shape [3] that you've worked so hard at. It's wise to just leave it to the experts and wait for your next eyebrow appointment, but during a brow emergency when you can't get into a salon for one reason or another, you may resort to taking matters into your own hands.

Ahead, take note, because celebrity brow stylist Joey Healy [4] shared his tips on how to do your eyebrows at home.

In Between Salon Visits, Only Use Tweezers

Desperate times make it tempting to try an at-home waxing kit or threading, but resist the urge. Instead, carefully tweeze stray hairs. "When tweezing, pull the hairs in the direction that the hair grows," Healy said. "Make sure you only tweeze dead centre (the 'unibrow'), your forehead, the temples, and the upper eyelids. When you're doing it yourself, you're giving yourself a general perimeter, and you don't want to overpluck." In other words, leave the "shaping" to the experts.

In Between Salon Visits, Trim Long Hairs With Scissors

Most people don't think to trim their eyebrows when doing at-home brow maintenance, but it can make a world of difference. Use a scissor made specifically for trimming eyebrow hair, like the HD Brows Precision Eyebrow Scissors [5] (£9.50). "The best way to do it is to snip randomly at the ones that are absolutely the longest," Healy said. "The key to trimming is to trim one hair at a time at an angle. Never trim in a straight row across. Your brow ends up looking very blunt and stubby."

In Between Salon Visits, Remember Less Is More

"If you do find that you've overworked one of your brows, just stop," Healy said. "Don't try to fix your eyebrows by making the good one match the bad one." Until you can see a professional for help, use makeup to fill them in and make the mistake less noticeable. The last thing you want to do is mess up both of your brows in the name of symmetry.

In Between Salon Visits, Just Leave Them Alone

Eyebrow makeup [6] can do wonders at disguising overgrown brows. If you're nervous about touching up your eyebrows at home, just don't. Use the time between appointments to grow them out [7] to their fullest potential. You can use a brow serum to nourish them while you wait, like the RevitaLash RevitaBrow Advanced Eyebrow Conditioner [8] (£49).