Why do my eyes look sunken?
This is partly to do with the junction between the lower eyelid and the cheek. You wouldn’t think of it as a ‘junction’ as such because one area blends into the other—but the smoother that junction is, the less hollow your eyes will look. This junction is also known as the tear trough crease. Some people’s tear troughs become hollow as they age, others have puffy eye bags or pouchy bulges of fat, where the under-eye fat has slipped and descended from its original position. It is when this tear trough area becomes hollow that eyes can start to look sunken.
Eyes become more sunken with age because of two factors: the loss of periorbital fat—that’s the fat that lies beneath the skin in the eye area—and bone resorption.
- As you get older—usually starting in your early 40s—the fat pads in your face begin to shrink. You have around 20 of these fat pads in your face, some of them being under the eyes. These fat pads are known as ‘periorbital fat’ and are among the first to go. When this happens, the sunken-eye effect is made even more noticeable because the skin, no longer stretched over the same volume of fat, is looser and saggier and more likely to fold.
- We lose bone mass from the skull as we age, from the temples, around the eye sockets, along the jaw and chin, and around the mouth—in short, everything in the face begins to gradually collapse inwards. This means that the eye socket actually becomes larger with age than it was when you were younger. We can see this when looking at the skulls of younger and older women (a bit gruesome, I know), so it’s not just an optical illusion; your eye area actually does become more hollow than it used to be.
If you have darker skin, and pigmentation in the hollows under the eyes, this can make the hollowness look even more severe because of how the light plays on the skin.
Does weight loss cause hollow eyes?
Generally, ageing and genetics are more likely to be the causes of hollow eyes. That said, when you lose fat, you lose fat globally—i.e. from everywhere, from your face as well as your body—so significant weight loss can make the appearance of hollowness that bit worse.
How do you increase periorbital fat?
There is no way of doing this naturally. If you were to follow the old maxim of having to choose between the face and the body as you age, and chose to have the face carry more weight, you might be lucky and keep fat in the right parts of the face, ie underneath the eyes. But frankly, it’s unlikely.
The reliable—but extreme—way to adjust periorbital fat is to have an eye lift, a blepharoplasty, and have the fat pads above or below the eyes smoothed out and re-draped as part of the procedure.
When it comes to non-surgical options, you can go for fat injections—which, exactly as they sound, are injections of your own fat into areas where volume has been lost. Or, you could opt for injections of dermal filler, as below. This won’t increase the amount of fat in the area, but it will replace some of the volume around the eye socket.
It’s possible to have filler injected around the orbital rim, but practitioners will avoid injecting fillers any closer to the eye than that. This is partly because this area is a snake pit of nerves and blood vessels which you absolutely do not want to hit with a needle (if filler is injected into a vessel leading towards the eye, it could block it and cause blindness), and partly because this area is a space going back towards the eye. It’s possible to position filler down onto bone or just under the skin, but not into a space such as the one around your eyes.
Can I use filler under my eyes?
Yes, you absolutely can—and it can have great results. You can use filler up to the orbital rim, but not beneath the skin of the lower eyelid. What you can use in that area is PRP (platelet-rich plasma, extracted from your own blood), which stimulates regrowth of skin tissues and strengthens the area.
Some fillers are designed to be used close to the eye—these have a lighter, more fluid texture than, for instance, the fillers used for adding structure around the jaw, as the molecules of hyaluronic acid within them are less heavily cross-linked and bound together. Have a look at our page on fillers for more information on what the procedure involves and what the different types of fillers are. I’d also recommend watching the following episode of Tweak of the Week, where I specifically look at under-eye filler.
It’s worth noting that if you have dark circles from hyperpigmentation, having filler injected into this area will not reduce the pigmentation—that needs to be treated with skincare. In fact, there are a lot of complicating factors—every face is different, and every face will respond best to different avenues of treatment, so the most important thing is to find an experienced practitioner whose work you like the finished look of, as they will be best placed to figure out what the best course of action is for you as an individual. You don’t want to end up with a botched job where you have ‘speed-bumps’ of filler beneath the eye, so your practitioner really needs to know their stuff.
How can I permanently fix sunken eyes?
Unfortunately, if we’re speaking in non-surgical terms, nothing can be done to permanently fix the appearance of sunken eyes. Surgically speaking, though, a lower blepharoplasty (also known as a lower-eye lift) can improve the look of the area. Cautious treatment with injectable fillers should improve the area for a year at a time.
Can I use skincare to treat sunken eyes?
No. skincare cannot help to revolumise a face that’s starting to look gaunt. Some creams or makeup promise a ‘plumping’ effect, but what they’re referring to is plumping up the skin. This will indeed make the skin look softer and less wrinkly, but this will only make a difference of a fraction of a millimetre. Skincare cannot and will not do anything to replace the volume that has been lost beneath the surface, whatever its packaging might suggest.
Can I prevent sunken eyes?
Other than maintaining a higher body weight than you might be used to as you age, in the hope that the fat in your face will stay put beneath the eyes, which it may not do—no, you can’t. Sorry.
What are the best tear trough exercises?
I’m sceptical as to how well these work because the loss of volume around the eyes is mostly due to loss of fat in the area, rather than muscle. There are people who do suggest that facial exercises for the eyes might work, but I’m not convinced. Once you factor in the way we lose bone in the tear trough as we age, it’s hard to imagine how any exercise can claim to improve volume in the eye area.