Making Beautiful Lips and Not Just Fillers

Beautiful lips are everywhere, and most of us have some idea of what we want but not how to get there.

If you’ve ever dissected lips in anatomy, you know they are surprisingly complex in structure. Think about all the expressions they can make… like kissing, smiling, frowning, showing tension, compressing, chewing, etc.  And then think about all the tiny muscles and microscopic nerves it takes to do all that.  It’s really incredible. So it’s no wonder, we’re seeing so many odd lips out there, due to questionable technique with fillers, or just a provider who doesn’t have a good aesthetic eye. The artistic part is subjective.

What to think about and discuss with your provider:

Fillers

  1. Lips need to integrate with the whole face. Look at your entire face in a large mirror. Please don’t use a magnifying mirror for this. Is your head larger or smaller for your body size?  What is your hat size? Are your lips naturally smaller or larger?  Do your other features, like your nose, eyes and brows, support larger lips. Or would they look weirdly out of proportion? Do you lips naturally have more horizontal (longer across) dimension, or more vertical? Are they balanced? When you look at photos of lips you like, do they at least somewhat resemble the ones you have naturally? You can totally alter your lips some, but anything too crazy will just look weird.
  2. Start conservativelyYou can always add more filler, and sometimes it can be reduced or adjusted, but who wants to go through a week or two of adjustments and looking weird in the meantime? Let your dermatologist or other provider guide you as to which filler. We have 10 different ones in our clinic now, and they all have different properties. Insisting on one may give you an awful result, when a different choice could be beautiful.

Skincare for beautiful Lips

  1. Wear sunscreen on your lipsWhy? 3 reasons. The lips get sun damaged very easily, wrinkle and can develop brown spots. Sun damage starts to destroy the vermilion border of the lips; making them harder to define. In addition, many skin cancers, and precancerous areas occur on or around the lips. A persistent area of scaling, or chapping on the lower lip may be precancerous (actinic cheilitis) and should be checked by a dermatologist.
  2. Improve your lips with skincare products. You really don’t need a separate lip product (except sunscreen). I and many of our patients just use their regular skincare products on the lips too. Your eye area product (try Madison MD Eye Rescue) works well too. You can also just do your lips with the serums, antioxidants, moisturizers, etc. that you put on the rest of your skin. Retinol or tretinoin is too much for the thin lip skin usually, so perhaps avoid that one.

Hope this helps,

Dr. Brandith

Dr. Brandith Irwin, MD

Ask me your skincare question!

Hi, I’m Dr. Irwin. I believe that consumers deserve a medically trained and unbiased skin care advocate.

  • All our content is written and researched by myself.
  • My medical office in Seattle has treated thousands of patients for 15+ years.
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