Skin Metrics
The eye area is one of the first places to show change. The skin here is thinner, has fewer oil glands, and reflects lifestyle patterns easily, sleep, stress, hydration, screens, and time.
Dr. Alice Rudd · Cofounder · Skin Science · MBBS Monash University
The eye area is one of the first places to show change. The skin here is thinner, has fewer oil glands, and reflects lifestyle patterns easily, sleep, stress, hydration, screens, and time. A 2025 review linking sleep quality to skin appearance found that poor sleep measurably alters pigmentation, hydration and transepidermal water loss — effects that are often most visible around the eyes before they are visible elsewhere on the face (Xu et al., 2025).
Stella tracks several signals around the eyes to help you understand what kind of change you're seeing and whether it's temporary, cyclical, or structural.
Dark circles aren't all the same. They can come from pigmentation (brown tone in the skin itself), vascular visibility (blue or purple tone from blood flow under thin skin), or shadowing caused by hollows or under-eye contours.
Understanding which type you have helps avoid guesswork and frustration.
Puffiness is often related to fluid shifts. It can change day to day and even hour to hour. Stella tracks how often puffiness appears, when it tends to be worse, and how quickly it settles.
This helps you see patterns linked to sleep, salt intake, stress, or screen strain.
Sometimes, the fullness under the eyes is not fluid, it's the natural fat pads beneath the skin becoming more visible over time. This is a structural change, not swelling.
Stella monitors how this area changes gradually, so you can understand long-term direction without reacting to daily fluctuations.
The hollow between the lower eyelid and the upper cheek can deepen over time. When this happens, it creates shadows that make dark circles appear stronger, even if the skin tone itself hasn't changed.
Tracking hollows helps distinguish between shadow and pigment.
Stella looks at multiple signals together, smoothness, fine expression lines, hollowness, and under-eye tone, to understand how the eye area is aging relative to the rest of your face.
This isn't about looking younger. It's about understanding the story your eye area is telling so you can support it with intention.
The eye area reflects your rhythms, how you sleep, how you recover, how your body holds stress.
Alice is a Stella co-founder and dermatologist. She trained at Monash University and brings clinical experience to Stella’s measurement framework and scientific boundaries. She also runs Skindepth, a Melbourne dermatology practice.
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