Celebrity makeup artist, Bakeup Beauty founder.
Most makeup tutorials are filmed in perfect lighting with four hours and seventeen products. Useful for entertainment. Not useful for a Tuesday morning.
A real-life routine has different requirements: it has to be fast, it has to survive a full day, and it has to look good without looking like effort. Here's how to build one in five steps or fewer.
What a real-life routine actually looks like
Most routines get long because products get added over time and nothing ever gets removed — the result is a fifteen-step routine that takes forty minutes and still doesn't reliably produce the look you want. A real-life routine has five steps or fewer, uses products that earn their spot by doing something visible, and is fast enough that you'll actually do it when you're running late.
Step 1: Start with skin, not coverage
The biggest lever in any routine isn't foundation — it's skin prep. Moisturized, well-prepped skin makes every product on top of it look better and last longer. That doesn't need to be complicated: a gentle cleanser, a moisturizer, and SPF covers the fundamentals, and consistency matters more than complexity.
Daily Meltdown ($34) is built for exactly this: it removes makeup fully without disrupting the skin barrier, which matters if you're using actives or just want to wake up with skin that doesn't immediately need saving. If your skin is well-prepped, you can swap full foundation for a tinted moisturizer or light-coverage base — the finish looks more natural and takes about ninety seconds.
Step 2: Pick your one feature
Every good everyday look has a focal point. Most routines fail because people try to do everything — full brows, eye look, contour, highlight, bold lip — and the result reads as busy rather than polished. Choose one: eyes, lips, or skin. If your skin looks great from step one, let that carry the look and keep everything else minimal. If you want eyes, do eyes, and keep the lips a nude or tinted balm. This is how professional artists actually work — not maximum intensity everywhere, a hierarchy and a commitment to it.
Step 3: Add lashes last
If you're doing an eye look, mascara comes last — it takes about thirty seconds when you do it right. A few technique notes that actually matter: wiggle the wand at the root before sweeping upward, which deposits the most product where lashes are densest; use two lighter coats instead of one thick one, since one heavy coat clumps; and if you're doing bottom lashes at all, use whatever's left on the wand rather than reloading, since heavy mascara on the bottom lashes can drag the eye down.
Tarantulash ($32) is the product to know here — Jo Baker's own formula, built over two decades of doing exactly this on people who get photographed for a living. Real volume and length, no smudging or flaking by mid-afternoon, and it's 100% vegan and cruelty-free.
Step 4: Edit down
Once you have a draft of your routine, take one product out and see if anyone notices — including you. The answer is usually no, and you've bought yourself three minutes every morning going forward. This is an ongoing process: as your technique improves, products that were doing heavy lifting early on become less necessary.
The Micro Palm Palettes ($24) work well here — a handful of intentional shades beats a forty-shade palette where you actually use three colors. Fewer choices, faster decisions.
Step 5: Set it and forget it
A real-life routine should run on autopilot once it's built. A few habits that help: keep your products in one place, in the order you use them, since decision fatigue makes people skip steps; do the same routine in the same order every time, since a routine you've done two hundred times takes half as long as one you're still figuring out; and when something works, stick with it rather than swapping it out for the next new thing.
The products that earn their spot
A Bakeup Beauty routine built for real life: Daily Meltdown ($34) for step one, a Micro Palm Palette ($24) for your color story, and Tarantulash Mascara ($32) as the step you don't skip. Free delivery kicks in at $50, so the mascara and a palette qualify together. Or save with the Tarantulash + Daily Meltdown bundle, which pairs the two at a combined discount.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many steps should a daily makeup routine have?
Five or fewer. More than that and consistency drops — the routine you skip on a rushed morning isn't doing anything for you.
What order should I apply makeup in?
Skin prep first, then your one focal feature, with mascara applied last so any eyeshadow fallout lands on set, clean skin instead of already-applied foundation.
How do I make my morning routine faster without giving up the look?
Remove one product at a time and see if the look still holds. Most routines have at least one step that's habit rather than necessity.
The honest truth
The best routine is the one you'll actually do — not the one with the most steps or the most expensive products. Build something fast, make it reliable, and edit it down to what's actually earning its spot. Start with the Bakeup Beauty essentials.
