The tool you need for perfect make-up

I’ve been doing it all wrong.

I’ve been missing a trick: looking at my face properly, clearly and — oh, God — unflinchingly. Craning forward over the bathroom sink, casting my neck into spasm and my face into shadow. Sitting on my bed with a hand-held mirror and light from the window illuminating only one side of my face. Sitting in the car, attempting to do my make-up in the flappy sun-visor mirror. Doing one feature at a time using a teeny-tiny powder compact mirror while simultaneously on the phone and watching telly. And then wondering why my make-up never looked properly bothered with. 

The first time I looked in the Simplehuman Sensor Mirror Round Pro, I sprang physically backwards. Who was this crone with pores like meteor holes and blotches and HAIRS? This is a 5x magnifying situation with a 10x magnifying option and an app for your phone that will adjust the ring around the mirror to any lighting you need: daylight, office light, evening light. And it charges, meaning it’s portable, too. 

After the horror subsides, absolute control is revealed. This, my beauties, paves the path to flawless skin and excellent eyes. The blending. The colour-matching. The precision. It allows you to see your face as a make-up artist would. This provides the steady, professional brutality of a proper, technologically supported mirror. I still approach it with caution, but for those times when I need to know I’ve tried, I would not be without it.

Sensor Mirror Round Pro, £219.99 (simplehuman.com)