Several common habits can make a stye worse, from touching and squeezing the bump to wearing eye makeup or contact lenses while it’s still inflamed. A stye is a bacterial infection of an oil gland or hair follicle on your eyelid, almost always caused by Staphylococcus aureus. Most resolve on their own, but the wrong moves can drag out healing, spread bacteria, or turn a minor nuisance into a serious infection.
Squeezing or Popping the Stye
This is the single fastest way to make things worse. A stye looks like a pimple, so the urge to pop it makes sense, but the eyelid is not your chin. Squeezing a stye can push infected material deeper into the tissue, leading to severe infection, permanent eyelid scarring or pigment changes, and even a corneal abrasion if bacteria reach the surface of the eye. The Cleveland Clinic specifically warns against attempting to drain a stye at home for these reasons.
Rubbing or repeatedly touching the area carries a similar risk on a smaller scale. Every time your fingers contact the stye, you introduce more bacteria and increase inflammation. You also risk transferring the infection to the other eye or to other oil glands along the same eyelid.
Wearing Makeup on an Infected Eyelid
Applying mascara, eyeliner, or eyeshadow while you have a stye traps bacteria against the very glands that are already clogged and infected. Makeup products also degrade over time and become breeding grounds for bacteria on their own. Layering that on top of an active infection slows healing and can introduce additional bacterial strains.
If you’ve used eye makeup during or just before a stye appeared, those products are now contaminated. Reusing the same mascara wand or eyeliner pencil after the stye heals is a common reason people get recurrent infections. Toss anything that touched your eyes in the days leading up to the stye.
Skipping Eyelid Hygiene
Inadequate cleaning of the eyelid margins promotes bacterial colonization and blockage of the oil glands that line your lash line. If you’re not gently washing your eyelids daily while you have a stye, you’re giving bacteria the undisturbed environment they need to multiply. A simple routine of warm water and a mild cleanser along the lash line helps keep the area from getting worse.
Reusing towels and pillowcases is another overlooked factor. Bacteria from a stye can transfer to fabric and then back to your eye, or to the other eye. Styes rarely spread between people, but reinfecting yourself through a dirty washcloth or pillowcase is a real and preventable problem. Switch to a clean towel each time you touch your face, and change your pillowcase frequently while the stye is active.
Using Warm Compresses Incorrectly
Warm compresses are the standard home treatment, but doing them wrong can stall your recovery. The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends applying heat for about 5 minutes at a time, two to four times per day. A compress that’s too hot can burn the delicate eyelid skin and increase swelling. One that’s barely warm won’t do enough to soften the blocked oil and encourage drainage.
The other common mistake is inconsistency. Applying a warm compress once and then forgetting about it for two days doesn’t give the blocked gland enough sustained help to open. Regularity matters more than any single session.
Wearing Contact Lenses
Contact lenses sit directly on the surface of your eye, and wearing them during an active stye creates problems on multiple fronts. The lens can irritate the already swollen eyelid, and bacteria from the infection can contaminate the lens itself. The American Academy of Ophthalmology distinguishes between a stye (actively infected) and a chalazion (a non-infected bump). Contacts may be acceptable with a chalazion, but with an active stye, the infection risk makes them a poor choice. Stick with glasses until the swelling and tenderness are completely gone.
Stress and Poor Sleep
Stress doesn’t directly cause a stye, but chronic stress elevates cortisol levels, which suppresses your immune response. A weakened immune system is slower to fight off the bacterial infection already in your eyelid, which means the stye lingers longer and may grow larger. Sleep deprivation compounds the effect by further reducing your body’s ability to mount an effective defense against infection. People under sustained stress are more prone to infections generally, and a stye is no exception.
This also helps explain why some people get styes repeatedly during high-pressure periods of their lives. The underlying bacterial exposure hasn’t changed, but the body’s ability to contain it has.
Underlying Eyelid Conditions
Certain chronic conditions make styes harder to resolve and more likely to recur. Blepharitis, a persistent inflammation of the eyelid margins, increases bacterial colonization along the lash line and keeps oil glands in a state of dysfunction. If you have blepharitis, a stye isn’t just an isolated event; it’s a symptom of an ongoing problem that needs its own management.
Rosacea, seborrheic dermatitis, and chronic dry eye are all associated with blepharitis and meibomian gland dysfunction. These conditions change the composition of the oils your eyelid glands produce, making blockages more likely. A stye that develops on top of one of these conditions tends to be more stubborn because the environment that caused it hasn’t changed even after the acute infection clears.
What Happens When a Stye Gets Worse
Most styes are self-limiting, meaning they drain and heal without medical intervention. But when they’re aggravated by the factors above, the infection can progress. The most common complication is a chalazion, a firm, painless lump that forms when the blocked gland becomes chronically inflamed rather than clearing. Chalazia can persist for weeks or months and sometimes require a minor in-office procedure to drain.
In uncommon but serious cases, an untreated or worsening stye can lead to cellulitis of the eyelid and surrounding skin. This is a spreading bacterial infection that causes significant redness, swelling, and pain beyond the original bump. Rarely, the infection can progress to orbital cellulitis, which affects the deeper tissues around the eye and requires urgent medical treatment. These outcomes are preventable in most cases by avoiding the behaviors that feed the infection and keeping the area clean.