Best Waterproof Eyeliners of 2026

There is no sharpener anywhere in this pencil's life. The tip twists up and re-forms as it wears, so there are no shavings in a makeup bag and nothing to hunt for at seven in the morning — the small convenience that made us reach for it more often than any other pencil here. It is a slim barrel that lives in a purse without shedding colour over everything else.

Onyx is a soft, blendable black rather than a hard ink line. Press it into the lash line, drag the edge out with a fingertip, and you have a lived-in eye in about ten seconds; that same softness is why it cannot draw a sharp graphic flick. It is the format that works on the waterline, and it goes on there without tugging, though the line it leaves is definition rather than drama.

Wear is the ordinary part. On the lid it holds all day. On the waterline and at the outer corner it softens as the hours pass, and by evening it reads as shadow more than liner. That is a fair trade for a pencil you can reapply in a moving car without a mirror, which is exactly how we use it.

The same pencil comes in blue, green and pewter alongside Onyx, and a coloured line along the lower lash line is the easiest experiment in this whole group to live with. Buy the black first; the others are for the days when black feels like too much.

At the bottom of this group's price range sits a brush-tipped liquid that draws a cleaner hairline than pens costing more. The ultra-fine brush starts almost dry at the inner corner and pulls a wing in one movement, and the black is a true matte rather than a dark grey. We have not found a tidier first stroke here.

The tank-and-brush delivery is the clever part: colour feeds down through the tip as you draw instead of sitting in a sponge, so the line stays even from the first stroke of a session to the last. It dries down quickly enough that a blink will not wreck it, and once set, a sweaty walk home does not move it. On our lids the ends of the wing thin out by evening — this is not a sixteen-hour liner on everyone — but it never travelled into the crease, which is the part that actually ruins a look.

The brush takes a lighter hand than a felt tip. Press as you would with a pen and the line wobbles wide; touch the tip down and pull, and it behaves. That is the one skill this liner asks for, and it is a couple of tries of practice rather than a learning curve.

The black is flat matte, which is what makes it look like ink on camera, with no shimmer or metallic cast to catch the light. It is the liner we reach for when the wing is the point and we do not want to think about the cost of getting it wrong.

If you have never made a liquid liner behave, start here. The felt tip on the H2O Proof is short, firm and tapered, so the line goes where you put it instead of skating across the lid the way a long brush does. You can draw a tight line into the lash line and stop there — this pen does not demand a wing.

We valued it most for that tight-line job. The formula is thin enough to build in two passes, it dries in a few seconds so the second pass does not lift the first, and the jet black is a true black. Felt tips are usually the ones that splay and start drawing fuzz after a few weeks; this one has kept its point, which is unusual at the price.

Where it comes up short is hour six on a warm day. By late afternoon the outer third of the line has thinned, and if you rub your eye it will move. For a beginner still deciding whether liquid liner is for them, that is a fair trade; for a daily wearer who needs the line to survive a twelve-hour shift, the stila holds better.

One thing we did not expect: the black is intense enough that some wearers will want to soften it. It is a stark, inky line, and on a pale lid in daylight it reads closer to evening makeup than to a daytime tight line.

There is a sponge smudger screwed onto the other end of this pencil, and it tells you what the Exaggerate is for: a soft, blended line rather than a razor-edged flick. Selling that as waterproof eyeliner is a stretch, and the honest reading is that it holds through a workday and stays soft at the edges. Run the smudger along the lash line for ten seconds and you have a smoky eye from one product.

The shade here is 212 Rich Brown, which is the brown to know about if black feels hard in daylight. On the lid it is warm and densely pigmented; on the waterline it gives subtler definition than black. Ten hours is the shortest wear claim of any pick in this group, and that matches what we saw — it is a daytime liner that wants a second pass before dinner.

This is a pick for a lived-in line, not for precision. The point is soft and on the wide side, so hairline flicks are fiddly, and the formula never sets to a hard film. That is the point: a line meant to look smudged does not need to be bulletproof, and the fade at hour eight reads as intentional rather than neglected.

The built-in sharpener is where our patience runs out. It is a neat idea that stops cutting a usable point well before the pencil is finished, leaving a stub with a thick, soft tip. Keep a standalone sharpener in the drawer and this stays useful to the last inch.

If the eyeliner is the loudest thing on your face, this is the pen built for it. The tip is a flexible brush that widens as you press, so a single stroke goes from a point to a fat graphic wing, and the colour is a true matte black with no shine and no grey underneath it. Nothing else here draws a dramatic eye this fast.

It is also the pick here we trust least on a wet or oily lid. On a normal day it holds through the morning and thins at the outer corner by late afternoon; add heat or a watery eye and it travels into the crease. The tank pools formula at the base of the tip as well, so the first stroke of a session can land as a blob — wipe the tip on a tissue and it behaves.

For a night out, none of that matters much. It sets quickly, it goes on opaque in one pass, and a wing this bold rarely needs to survive more than a few hours. This is the liner we take when the look is the point and the schedule is short.

So it sits in the drawer as a specialist: the best tool here for a matte, graphic eye and the weakest for a long shift, a humid wedding or a gym session. If your lids stay dry and your days are short, it is a great deal of liner for the money; if they do not, it is the one that will let you down.

The waterline was our first stop with this one, because that is where a creamy pencil either works or immediately does not. It went on without tugging and stayed comfortable, and the black is dense enough to read as a line rather than a shadow. Then we rubbed an eye, and it moved.

Texture is the whole story here. It is soft enough to smudge across the lid as a base under powder shadow, a second job no liquid in this group can do, and that same softness is why the line stays movable all day. Set it with a matching shadow and it lasts considerably longer; worn bare, you get a few hours of good definition before it fades.

That makes it a good second liner rather than a primary one. For the waterline, soft daytime definition, or a base under shadow, it is one of the cheaper pencils here and does the job well; for a wing or a twelve-hour day, a liquid does more.

The retractable barrel is the quiet advantage: nothing to sharpen on the train and nothing to snap off in a bag. That is why it is the pencil that stays in the small bag rather than the drawer.

Ours arrived as Charcoal, and it is worth saying plainly: this is not the inky black of the liquids. It is a soft, smoky grey-black that reads more like a smudged pencil than a drawn line, which suits a soft eye and disappoints anyone chasing a hard graphic edge.

For the money it does a lot. It glides without tugging, the colour goes on dense, and it sets to a satin finish that holds a lash line through a workday. We have used it on the lid rather than the waterline, where a soft pencil like this gives up faster.

The retractable mechanism is the weak spot. The tip can snap under pressure, especially with a lot of it wound out, and a pencil that has lost its point is one you end up drawing with sideways. Wind out a millimetre at a time and it survives far longer.

As a spare in a gym bag or a first gel pencil, it earns its place at the bottom of this group's price range. As the liner you wear every day, spend more for a tip that tolerates being carried around.