To Gloss or Not to Gloss? What are your lips wearing?
Since you received your first colored lipstick or gloss as a little girl, you’ve been decorating your lips with all sorts of colors. There always seem to be unanswered questions with it.
Is this too red? Too pink? Too shiny? Will it come off when I take a sip of water?
The Health and Style Institute wants to equip you with what you need to look flawless every day, and so finding the right lipstick and/or gloss is a must.
Thin Looking Lips
If you want your lips to look fuller, lipstick is the easiest way to create that illusion. Use light, frosty lipsticks. The frost creates a shiny, almost metallic appearance. The reflecting light adds to the apparent size of your lips. Just be careful – the reflection can point out every crevice, so if you’re working with chapped lips, use a moisturizing stick for a few days before trying frosty lipstick. After applying the lipstick, top it off with a gloss. Again, the extra reflection will help add fullness to your lips.
Full Looking Lips
If you already have full looking lips, you should avoid gloss. You don’t want to look like your lips are so big that they are unnatural, so less shine is better. You can apply a touch of gloss and spread it around your lips if you really love it, but no more than that. Try Crème or Matte lipstick. Crème gives a dewy look and is very hydrating, but needs to be reapplied throughout the day. Matte only needs to be applied in the morning, but it tends to dehydrate lips.
Older Looking Lips
As we age, the areas around the mouth tend to be home to a few wrinkles. The wrong lipstick can draw attention to those. Avoid matte lipstick, because this tends to dry lips, making the smallest wrinkles look larger. It also doesn’t have a shine, which you want. Choose a hydrating lipstick with a touch of shine. To avoid magnifying imperfections that aren’t really there, schedule regular facials. If dirt clogs pores around your lips, they will look more wrinkled, and a facial will fix that.
Color
The right color for you depends mostly on your skin tone. With light skin, you want to look as natural as possible, which means using light pinks, peaches, and corals. If your skin is more medium, you can wear the same colors as someone with a light skin tone, but you have more options on top of that. Depending on the specific shade of your skin, you could pull off brown, pink, or red. Most people with medium toned skin can handle pink, and most of those can wear brown. If you have brown hair, you have a fair shot of being able to work with red as well. For those who either tan easily or else have a naturally tan complexion, purple-based colors are great. You can also wear browns, or simply clear lipgloss. With darker skin, you want to work the extremes. This means try different shades of red, as well as some browns or just clear lipgloss. Avoid orange bases, like peach or coral.
For more ideas for what color works for you, visit the Health and Style Institute. Combine the perfect color with a facial, and your whole face will be absolutely glowing.
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