Apparently, there’s a rumor going around about lipstick. Many people keep asking, does lipstick make your lips lose color?
No! It certainly does not!
In fact, lipstick can enhance your lips with smoothness and color. You may lose your natural lip color due to other factors, but we can assure you that you can wear all the lipstick you want and it won’t make your lips lose any color.
Most likely, if you regularly wear lipstick, when you look into the mirror in those moments you’re sans lipstick, you may perceive them to look lighter than usual. Lipstick has no impact on changing your lips’ natural color. Age does that to you, just like it does to every other part of your body.
Lips also gain color from sun exposure. Hopefully, you’re smart about protecting them with SPF while you get that color from head to toe. In the colder months, you might not be out in the sun as much as you were in the summer and your lips may return to their natural lip shade too.
In essence, your lipstick has nothing to do with making your lips lose color. If you’re feeling self-conscious about your lip color, you can apply your favorite lipstick for a boost of confidence and without any worry that it is making your lips lose color.
It all boils down to how you care for your lips, not to mention the rest of your body. Understanding what makes your lips different from the rest of your body and how to keep them nurtured is the key to have naturally colorful and beautiful lips.
Keep reading and you’ll find out what is to blame for a loss of color in your lips!
If not lipstick, then what’s making your lips lose color?
Lipstick isn’t what’s taking your natural color from your lips. But there are other things that could be changing them. Again, what you do to care for your lips is critical. We’ll tell you how to pamper them like a pro. Read on to find out!
The skin on your lips is thin making them more vulnerable
Lips are thinner-skinned than the rest of your body. They only have about 3 to 5 cellular layers. To put that in context, the rest of your skin can have as much as 16 layers! This thinness is why it has a pinkish color because you can see the blood vessels just below them.
Another thing to note about lips is that they don’t have hair follicles like the other external parts of your body. Well, except for the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. Hair follicles help bring a characteristic of hardness to the skin and without it, your lips are softer, yes, but also more vulnerable too.
Lips don’t have sebaceous glands either which is what gives the rest of your skin moisture. Lips are left to fight the battle alone with the occasional assistance of your saliva. This explains why your lips can get chapped much more quickly than any other skin on your body when they’re not given enough moisture.
The age factor
Sadly, age does take a toll on lips. Children are blessed with soft, plump, red lips. But as time goes on, lips lose volume and how much redness shows. This is due to the natural degradation of both collagen and elastin. Plus, lips naturally lose moisture over time.
Studies have shown that lips tend to lose color as they age. Older women report a paler appearance and feel that lips look lifeless. But it’s actually a decrease in lightness as they become darker. Chroma decreases and therefore creates a loss of radiance.
Basically, what this means is that with every birthday, your lips are slowly losing a bit of youthfulness. To keep your lips looking luscious for years to come, you’ll have to take care of them, which we’ll detail further below.
Lipstick will certainly keep you confident through all phases of your life. While you’re young, it will add that extra pop of color to define your lips and give you a more glamorous look. And as you age, you can use it for a subtle boost that will create a more youthful look.
Keep reading and you’ll discover how to maintain the youthfulness of your lips as long as possible.
How to maintain the radiant pink color of your lips
While it is true you can coat your lips with lipstick any time you want a boost of color, there are moments when you want to have a natural look. For example, wearing lipstick to the gym is a big hassle. You’ll wind up smudging it across your face when you use your towel or getting it all over your water bottle.
Plus, there’s nothing like holding onto that youthful color you have now. Age will come for you in time, but you can put it off further if you take these tips to heart to preserve your natural lip color.
Keeping your lips hydrated is key
As with all the skin on your body, staying hydrated will always serve you well. This is especially true for your lips. You should be drinking enough water but that doesn’t mean you have to force it down your throat. Other things can boost your body’s hydration without the incessant need to log your water bottles or run to the bathroom to pee it out every 5 minutes.
Try drinking coconut water or herbal teas too when you’re sick of water. Eat more fruits and veggies as well, like cucumbers and melons, which naturally have a high water content. This will boost your body’s hydration without chugging more water than a frat house chugs beer.
You’ll know you’re hydrating enough when your urine is either clear or pale yellow in color and your lips feel less dry.
Another thing you should watch out for is your lip balm. Waxy lip balms are great for guarding against moisture loss. Like when it’s freezing outside and you have to walk to the subway station against the snowy winds. But it doesn’t absorb into your skin. It’s more about protecting the moisture you have. Lip balms with camphor or menthol in them can further dry lips out and irritate them.
What you should be doing is choosing something that is more creamy in texture. Look for hyaluronic acid or squalane as the ingredients. These draw water from the environment to hydrate skin. Additionally, formulations with shea butter or jojoba and avocado oils lock in hydration. These humectants and occlusive ingredients give your lips the mega-boost it needs.
You don’t have to throw out that waxy lip balm. Stash it in your bag for blustery fall and winter days to help protect your newly-hydrated lips from the elements.
It’s always wise to protect and hydrate your lips so they look and feel their best. Nothing is worse than having that dry, chapped feeling. It’s so uncomfortable, and it doesn’t look sexy either. By trying this new tactic to hydrate from within and then lock in the hydration with a waxy balm when needed, you should notice a drastic improvement in the quality of your lips, both in how they feel and how they appear!
Quit smoking
How do we put this politely? Smoking isn’t attractive and for so many more reasons than you think! We’re not going to insult your intelligence by telling you how bad it is for your health. You know what it can do.
But for your skin, it’s the cardinal sin numero uno! Smoking causes the skin around your mouth to age faster, sagging and wrinkling. It can also lead to a darkened appearance for your lips and gums. You’re destroying your pretty smile with every puff!
Smoking has a lot of disadvantages but the thing that makes it even more uncool is that it speeds up the aging process for your skin. It’s the nicotine. It causes your blood vessels to shrink and become more narrow. This restricts blood flow, essentially depriving your skin of the oxygen and nutrients it needs to look young and beautiful.
Have you ever seen those studies of twins where one twin smoked and the other did not? The differences in their appearances is astounding! The twin that smoked looks decades older than the one that didn’t. If you want to have a leathery appearance when you go to your reunion years down the road, then keep smoking. But if you want to look as great as you do now, throw out those cigarettes and don’t ever look back!
In addition to causing skin to sag and wrinkle, and the darkening of your lips and gums, smoking causes uneven pigmentation so you’ll be left with blotchy, unhealthy-looking skin.
That’s just what the nicotine does. The tar and the thousands and thousands of chemicals in tobacco smoke impact your skin in the most negative of ways. Together, all these chemicals destroy the collagen and elastin in your skin. These proteins are what keep your skin’s structure intact, leaving it supple and bouncy. When it depletes, your skin’s fibers weaken which is how you get those ancient-looking wrinkles and saggy skin.
All that constant puckering of your lips and wrapping them around a hot cigarette filter makes your lips look like smoker’s lips too. It’s not a pretty look for you.
You may not notice now in your youth. It’s hard to imagine one day we’ll be old. But for the sake of your skin and your lips, take a look at older people around you and see how the choices they made in their youth have turned out for them. Do it for your health too and you’ll live a longer, more beautiful life!
Stay away from caffeine
Ok, please hold your tomatoes! Don’t pelt us with them! We hate to tell you this since we love coffee too, but high caffeine intake increases the loss of fluids. And when that happens, you lose those water-soluble vitamins when you pee.
These vitamins are the B vitamins and vitamin C. They get flushed out when you consume lots of liquids. Well, what about water? Water doesn’t have caffeine and caffeine pulls fluid from your body. You want vitamin C in your body to help build collagen and repair your skin cells.
Without enough vitamin C, you have a greater chance of having dry, damaged, and chapped lips.
Look, we love coffee, but consider having a cup less of it per day or consuming more vitamin C every day to counter the effects. This way, your body gets what it needs to keep on crushing it with collagen production.
Protect your lips from harmful UV rays
Newsflash: even when the weather isn’t hot and sunny, you still need to protect your lips from the harmful rays of the sun. Not doing so will risk damage. If you use SPF 15 or higher every day of the year, it slows down the visible signs of aging. As mentioned earlier, lips are incredibly sensitive and thinner-skinned than the rest of you. You absolutely must protect them at all times.
Whatever you use on your lips, choose an SPF formula and reapply it every hour to keep your lips safely guarded against those UVA and UVB rays.
Exfoliate your lips
If you want your lips to retain their natural color for longer, you should always take the time to exfoliate them. It’s best to do this in the morning.
Wake up with more beautiful lips by applying a quality lip treatment at night after brushing your teeth and going through the rest of your skincare regimen. When you wake up, you can use a damp washcloth or your soft-bristled toothbrush to gently buff off any dry or dead skin. By doing so, it helps boost the circulation to your lips which will help them look luscious.
Before you get buffing though, add a little facial oil or something to rehydrate your lips. To really indulge, you can mix a bit of brown sugar with either olive oil or coconut oil and rub it on your lips. Even regular sugar will work. One thing to avoid with lips is the use of salt. It can dry out your lips and sting too.
With lip exfoliation, it’s important not to overdo it. As this skin is more tender and delicate, you need to keep it limited to once a week. Doing it more frequently could rub them raw which is definitely not a good look.
Another thing to try that can boost your lips to further lusciousness is using vitamin E. Vitamin E capsules are awesome because you can cut them open and apply it directly to your lips. It boosts circulation and can help your skin generate new cells which will make them softer.
Conclusion
If the natural color of your lips is depleting, it’s definitely not caused by lipstick. If you are getting older, not protecting your lips in the sun, or smoking, you can expect your lips will start to look more tattered.
You can do something about it though by taking care of them with these tips. You won’t be able to stop time completely but by remembering that lips are a more delicate form of skin, you can prevent the premature signs of aging from developing and keep your lips looking fabulous before you’re old and grey.
And of course, you can always feel free to smooth on your favorite lipsticks and lip colors. These will add that boost of confidence without stealing your lips’ natural color away. But keep those lips naturally healthy and for those moments when you’re not wearing lipstick, you can smile with full-on confidence!