Tips for dealing with Pigmented Lips

Pigmented lips are the number one bane for Indian women (oh well, at least they are for me. Have lost count of the number of times have bought a perfectly lovely lipstick which looks ghastly on the lips).

Pigmented lips basically means that your lips are dark in color, and can range from a berry red to honey brown. While this may sound excellent (Isn’t it great to have lips that are already colored), it is a big problem when buying lipstick shades.

Image by ronsho © via Flickr

If you apply too sheer coverage & the lip color shows through and interferes. Too light and your skin starts to look grey & sickly.

As a result, lip color never looks the same on your lips as it does in the bottle or on the back of your hand. What looks lovely there looks ghastly on the face, because of which a large majority of Indian women prefer to wear shades like dark brown or maroon which are intense enough to camouflage the pigmentation.

But what if like me you don’t like either of these colors? Here are some tips that can help you.

1. Use deeply pigmented thick lip glosses, like Lakme Aquashine lipcolor. They are very intensely pigmented and coat the lips in a thick layer so that the lip color does not interfere.

2. Skip the lipstick and use a sheer tinted lip balm/gloss in the same shade as your lips. For example the Nivea Cherry Lip balm & Strawberry Lip Gloss in Streetwear are just a shade darker than my lips, so for a natural/nude look I skip lipstick and just apply either on top.

3. Use a concealer/liquid foundation to tone down the lip color. Apply concealer all over lips. Pat it down using loose powder. Apply lipstick on top using a brush with light strokes. (or else you will end up rubbing out the concealer)

;4. Apply thin layer of lipstick. Dust foundation powder over them. Apply second layer of lipstick. Skip gloss.

5. Use lip tints. They stain the lips and are available in lovely pink, watermelon, cherry red shades.

6. Use a lip liner the same shade as the lipstick and fill in your entire lips with it. Then apply the lipstick on top.

7. Don’t use beige or other such soft colored lipsticks. They look like lovely English roses but trust me, I tell from experience, they make you look ghostly.

8. Be grateful that at least you don’t have colorless corpse lips.