Lipstick is the first thing that comes to mind when we think about makeup. Adding color to the lips can make a huge difference to the features of your face. A poorly chosen shade of lipstick can easily destroy your whole look. That’s why it’s important to choose a color that suits you.

We at Bright Side are excited to share these 7 tips with you to help you choose the right lipstick shade.

The science behind lipstick

Applying makeup can be a very fun experience — you get to play with different colors, textures, and shapes. In some countries, women wear makeup every day, and it has become part of many of our routines. Even so, many of us don’t stop and think about the ingredients in our favorite products, so we’re going to discuss some of them.

The main ingredients you can find in lipstick are waxes, like beeswax and oils — often olive oil. The first ingredient helps the lipstick to have structure, and the second adds glossiness. To make your lips look fuller, the product sometimes contains capsaicin, which is a component found in chili peppers.

Then chemists add pigments, dyes, and fragrances, which are going to dictate the color and smell of the product. More recently, other ingredients, such as vitamin E, moisturizers, aloe, collagen, and sunscreen, have also been added to many lipstick formulas to protect the skin on the lips.

1. Determine your skintone

The very first step in choosing the right lipstick color is determining what skin tone you have. There are 5 main types of skin complexion: fair, light, medium, tan, and deep.

FAIR OR LIGHT

The lipstick shades that usually look great with fair or light skin are light pink, coral, peach, nude, and dusty red colors.

Rose, berry, cherry red, and mauve lipstick colors look gorgeous on girls with a medium skin tone.

Girls with a tan skin tone can totally rock coral, deep pink, bright red, and most other colors except for brown and purple shades.

Lipstick shades that suit a deep skin tone best are brown and purple shades like plum, caramel, wine, and blue-based reds.

2. Determine your skin undertone

Knowledge of you skin undertone will definitely help guide you. Basically, there are 3 types of undertones: cool, warm, and neutral.

• Cool undertones: fair or light skin — soft mocha or nude; medium skin — pink or cranberry shades; tan or deep skin — ruby or wine shades.
• Warm undertones: fair or light skin — pale pink or peachy nudes; medium, tan or deep skin — copper or bronze shades.
• Neutral: wide spectrum of colors, both cool and warm tones.

3. Shape of your lips

• Top heavy lips: bright lipstick on the bottom of the lips and a slightly darker shade of the same color on the upper lip.
• Bottom heavy lips: any color that suits your undertone + a little bit of light nude color right in the center of the upper lip.
• Asymmetrical lips: use a lip pencil in a shade similar to the lipstick color to outline the lips.

4. Size of the lips

• Thin lips: avoid dark and flashy lipstick colors, they will only make your lips look even thinner. Try applying glosses and creamy lipsticks.
• Plump lips: avoid lipstick shades that are too light and glossy, glittery textures.

5. Hair color

• Dark hair, fair and light skin: bright pink, scarlet, cherry, and plum colors.
• Blond hair, fair and light skin: dusty pink, purply pink, light pink, and scarlet colors.
• Dark hair, tan and deep skin: golden beige, ochre, terracotta, and bronze colors.
• Blond hair, tan and deep skin: caramel, ochre, warm pinks, and “salmon” pink.
• Brown hair, medium skin: beige, “salmon” pink, corals, and deep dusty pinks.
• Red hair, fair skin: “salmon” pink, corals, terracotta, and burnt sienna.

6. Eye color

• Brown eyes: bright reds, browns, and light pinks.
• Blue eyes: different shades of cherry or scarlet colors.
• Green eyes: terracotta, pinks.
• Grey eyes: nudes and plum colors.

7. Teeth color

• White teeth: Congratulations! You can choose whatever color you like.
• Yellow teeth: rose, slightly orange, light red colors. Avoid purples, browns, and bright scarlet, red shades.

Remember that this is just a guide you can use to start experimenting. At the end of the day, you can wear any shades you’d like or choose a more natural approach and not wear makeup at all.

Tips for applying your lipstick

If you’re like me, you probably just apply your lipstick without prior preparation. Maybe knowing that there’s a “correct” way to apply it sounds weird to you, but we can always learn something new. Who knows, maybe you’ll like it and will implement it into your routine.

• As an optional step, you can apply a primer or a small amount of foundation to even the color of your lips. This also helps so that the color of the lipstick is even and doesn’t feather outside of your lip line.
• Use a lip liner to outline the borders of your lips. There are so many different ways to apply lipstick. Some people decide to outline their lips after applying their lipstick, and others do it before. It’s up to you to decide what you like best. Some makeup trends outline the lips right outside your lip line so that they look fuller and juicier.
• Now apply the lipstick of your preference. You can use a small brush to apply it or you can do it by directly putting the product onto your skin. However you choose to do it is fine. You can set the lipstick in its place by removing the excess product. Simply hold a thin fabric over your freshly painted mouth and press your lips against it. Another step you can do is apply the makeup with a brush and a small amount of translucent powder.

• Keep the lipstick off of your teeth. There is a simple but very effective way to do it. Once you apply the product, you have to place a finger inside your mouth, close your lips together, and drag your finger out. Any residue that might have ended up on your teeth is now on your finger.
• Another very useful tip to stop transferring your lipstick onto a drinking glass is to lick your lips right before drinking from it. Trust us, it really works. If this tip is not for you, there are also special lipsticks that don’t transfer any residue onto things.
• Last but not least, try different trends and have fun. A quick Google search will give you all the trends that are in right now. If you want to and have time for that, you can basically try them all so that you’re able to pick the lip color and shades that look good on your skin tone.

BONUS:

If you have trouble determining your skin undertone, just follow these simple steps:

• Look at your veins. Blue and purple veins indicate cool toned skin; green veins — warm toned skin. If you can’t decide for sure if your veins are blue or green, you have a neutral skin undertone.
• Try on some silver and gold jewelry. Gold usually suits people with warm undertones, while silver looks better on people with cool undertones.

Now that you know how to choose the perfect lipstick shade for you, share your favorite go-to colors with us. Did you find any of these tips useful?

Let us know in the comments below!

Please note: This article was updated in September 2022 to correct source material and factual inaccuracies.

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