How to Achieve a $100 Glow Up in One Week

$100 Glow Up: A lady with yellow nails and a gold bracelet holds a martini glass

When talking about glowing up, most people picture a wardrobe change, dying your hair, or some sort of makeover akin to a teenage chick flick.

Instead of going the pricey route, we’re looking for affordable, quick, and healthy fixes. You can incorporate all of these tips with $74 and a weekend to spare!

5 affordable products to glow up

Here are some simple and affordable ways to improve your appearance for less than $100. You can feel more glamorous and make a strong first impression with a few tweaks.

1. Whiten your teeth

Whitening your teeth doesn’t have to be expensive - you can achieve just as white of a smile with over-the-counter strips as you can at the dentist. Lumineux whitening strips run around $22 for one week’s supply.

Plus, when you feel proud of your teeth, you’ll smile more and become 10x more radiant.

2. Get tan in any season

Glow up with affordable tanning towlettes

These L’oreal tanning wipes, costing $12 for a pack of seven, can give you a beautiful tan for far less money than most lotions. You can forget the tanning bed!

3. Try a hair mask

If you have frizzy or damaged hair, a bonding treatment can give you a beautiful smooth appearance. A bottle of Olaplex no. 3 costs anywhere from $20-$40, depending on size.

4. Match lipstick to your skin tone

Glow up with affordable lip gloss that matches your skin tone

You may have heard of color analysis, which can help you find a palette that matches your skin tone and features. Remember that it’s not just for clothes - it’s for makeup, too!

Choose a lipstick color that flatters your skin. Warm tones might gravitate toward peaches and brown, while cooler skin tones might prefer bluer pinks or reds.

At $10 a tube, NYX offers matte lip glosses in a wide array of colors.

5. Use cuticle kits to clean up your hands

Cuticle care is one of the most mentioned tips on the blog! Don’t worry about polish - moisturize your cuticles regularly and scrape the dead skin away. Your hands will look neat and beautiful.

Cuticle kits run as low as $10 on Amazon. You don’t need anything fancy to get the job done!

How to glow up by radiating confidence

Confidence isn’t necessarily fake ‘til you make it - faking it can be exhausting, and you're bound to slip. Try working on your inner self while adapting habits of confident people, starting with these 3 steps.

1. Select and complete small achievements

It’s time to get a bit uncomfortable and make strides. What are some things you’ve considered trying, but you’re too scared? You might want to start weightlifting, write a blog, join a book club, or create an online dating profile. Or, maybe you need to push yourself to do something much bigger, like move to a new city or invest in a home.

By trying new things and watching yourself succeed, you’ll slowly gain confidence in your abilities to handle hard things. Continue to make new goals as you accomplish them, increasing difficulty/discomfort each time.

2. Practice daily affirmations

Words are powerful - speak your desires to put them into the universe and increase their odds of becoming true. You might affirm your confidence, your ability to work hard and succeed, or goals you picture yourself achieving.

3. Build a confident demeanor

Again, it might be hard to fake it. But if you start with the first two steps, you're on your way to building confidence and ready to start adapting a confident demeanor.

Here’s what you need to accomplish: tall posture, loud and slow speech, and stillness.

You can achieve stillness with diaphragm breaths (AKA - pushing your stomach fully out as you breathe in). This will help you relax and naturally avoid jerky motions or an uneasy voice, so you’ll appear confident in uncomfortable situations. And poise under pressure is something people recognize immediately!