How To Apply Lipstick on Thin Lips

How to Apply Lipstick on Thin Lips

Applying lipstick on thin lips feels like it’s not even worth trying. I mean, it takes a lot of time and effort to actually apply the lipstick on your lips because there’s not enough space and you can mess things up quickly. Moreover, thin lips make it difficult to showcase the color of your lipstick and make those lips pop.

And things get really frustrating if you’re like me and have uneven, narrow lips on top of thin lips. That’s why it used to take me a really long time to put on some lipstick.

But for the life of me, I couldn’t let those untouched lipsticks pile up anymore! So I’ve come up with a few tips and tricks to make things easier and much quicker.

The good news is you can apply lipstick on thin lips comfortably and easily even if you’re a makeup beginner. Below is a step-by-step tutorial on how to apply lipstick when you have thin lips.

How To Apply Lipstick on Thin Lips

Step 1: Prep Your Lips

Before applying lipstick, remember to properly prep your lips. Exfoliating your lips with a gentle sugar scrub can give you smoother, softer lips. Follow with a moisturizing lip balm to plump your lips and reveal their natural color.

Step 2: Inline Your Lips

This is an optional step but it’s important if you’re like me and have small, uneven, narrow lips. This step gives the lips a wider appearance. It also makes it easy to apply lip liner if your lips lack natural definition on the edges.

Get a makeup pencil with a dark color such as brown or black. It can be anything including an eye pencil, a lip pencil, or a brow pencil. It’s not important because it won’t be visible in the end.

how to apply lipstick on thin lips - step 1

Open your mouth and use the pencil to draw two short lines on the inner corners of the mouth. When you close your lips, you’ll see that your lips look wider because you created shadows there.

And here’s a quick tip if you have naturally downturned lips. Instead of drawing straight lines on the corners of the mouth, draw them slightly tilted upward. This will give your lips an upturned appearance instantly.

Step 3: Choose the Right Lip Liner

You’ll need a lip liner to define the lips before applying lipstick. Make sure the color of your lip liner and the lipstick complement each other so that you have a more natural look.

Use a lip liner that is close to the color of your lips. Nudes, pinks, and soft reds usually make the most natural-looking lip liners to define the lips.

Even if you don’t have matching lipstick, these colors are usually on the safe side and they go well with a wide range of lipstick colors.

Step 4: Outline Your Lips

Start by drawing an ‘X’ on the cupid’s bow using your lip liner. If you want to make your lips look bigger, you can apply the liner a little higher above the cupid’s bow.

Start lining the upper lips from the corners of the mouth and bring the liner to the cupid’s bow where you draw the ‘X’. Once you’re done with the upper lip, move on to the lower lip.

Again, start from the outer corners and work your way toward the center. While drawing your lines, stay as close to the actual lip lines as possible. Even if you want to overline, go very slowly to avoid making things obvious.

Step 5: Apply Lipstick with a Brush

You can use a lipstick brush or an angled brush to apply lipstick. Using a brush gives you more control because it’s not easy to directly apply a bullet lipstick on thin lips.

Dab your lip brush onto the lipstick and slowly apply the color starting from the center of the lips. Make sure you apply your color slowly and build it in layers.

The good thing is that you don’t need to worry too much about the outer corners. Because you don’t need to apply your lipstick all the way!

Assuming that your liner and lipstick match in color, you just apply your lipstick on the inner areas avoiding the outer lines.

How to apply lipstick on thin lips - before and after

This is my before & after image. As you can see, my lips are pale, thin, small, narrow, and uneven. At the end of these steps, it was pretty easy to apply lipstick on my thin lips. They look more even and a little bigger than they actually are.

Step 6: Stamp Your Lipstick

I’ve seen that it’s very easy for the lipstick to fade and disappear in a short time when you have thin lips. And sometimes, using waterproof lip liners or lipstick doesn’t help because they can dry your lips.

Here’s what I do to make sure my lipstick stays in place on my thin lips and my efforts don’t go to waste. I use a small angled brush and a long-lasting matte eyeshadow to kind of stamp my lipstick in place.

Just dampen the brush and dip it into the eyeshadow pan, preferably with a color similar to your lipstick, and then place the brush on the edges of the lips.

You don’t even need to drag the brush or draw any lines, just gently press the brush into the skin to lay the color and that’s it. This enhances your lip definition and makes it last a lot longer.

Step 7: Highlight

You can enhance your results by taking advantage of highlighting. Using a small brush, you can apply concealer around the lips to highlight them. This can give you a clean, sleek look.

And because of highlighting, your lipstick color can look bolder. Additionally, you can try using a lip gloss on the center of your lips for a light-reflecting effect, which gives the illusion of fuller lips.

So this is how you can apply lipstick on thin lips. It might seem like a whole thing but trust me, the results are worth it. And practice makes perfect. It will take you a lot less to create the lip look you want as you keep experimenting and practicing.

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