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There are a lot of anime with teen characters, and while I've been using those as a wonderful reference for my art direction I'm not quite sure how to make my characters look like adults...whilst keeping the cute aesthetic. What do you think makes a character look older, using anime art as a reference?

Did you watch the Ghibli move "Howl's moving castle"?
I think you could get some good hints there as it shows a character who's young at first but then becomes very old. I think they still keep the cute aesthetic.
Now that might be a bit too old, but in general, I think smaller pupils or eyes (depending on the drawing style), a wider chin, a set back hairline. Note that adult men have wider shoulders and adult women have wider hips.
You might also want to look into Shuffle and compare the sprites of the pupils with those of the teacher/ parents.

How much older, exactly?

https://www.pixivision.net/en/a/552 >> This is an interesting pixivision post, showing the artist's favorite anime characters when they're older.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBoa8TAy65s If you're talking about child-teen-adult kind of thing, this is one of the videos that's most watched about the topic, that I can find with a google click.

Consider reading some of Naoki Urasawa's series. His characters' ages range quite a bit. The artist began drawing comics over thirty years ago. Yawara, Master Keaton, and the relatively dour Monster have been adapted to animation.

Takeshi Obata has also created series where major characters have a variety of ages, though he *might* be better at creating varied male characters. For instance, Hikaru no Go has a relatively realistic world full of distinct designs, and it had a TV adaptation.

Finally, consider looking at Hiromu Arakawa's series. There are important adult characters in both Fullmetal Alchemist and Silver Spoon. Both have been adapted to TV series.

This thread has some useful information on drawing young adult-ish looking anime characters. >> viewtopic.php?f=46&t=36041

It seems to me that the further anime moves away from teenage humans, the more realistic the style gets. For example, with the exception of the tiny cute grandma trope, elderly people tend to be drafted pretty realistically, with the colouring being the main "anime" indicator. Yunohana spring has some older/elderly characters which come to mind >> http://www.zerochan.net/Yunohana+SpRING%21