When choosing lipstick colors, there are three basic rules. (1) Thinner or smaller lips look best with brighter, more vivid colors. Brighter colors may take a bit of getting used to, but they truly make a smaller mouth more noticeable. Occasionally I read about or hear makeup advisorssuggesting that women should wear a neutral color on small lips and instead play up the eyes (as if the notion is ever to play down the eyes or ignore the mouth!). Test this technique for yourself before you give in to this nonsense. (2) Avoid darker colors on thin lips; they make the mouth look severe and harsh. (3) Larger lips can wear just about any color, but softer shades look better because darker or vivid colors can make large lips look too prominent.

Applying Lip Color 

A lip brush or lip pencil is an optional accessory. You can use a lip pencil to draw a definitive edge around the mouth to follow when applying lipstick, and a lip brush to control your application. A tube of lipstick makes too wide a mark for some lips and too narrow a mark for others. If your lips are small, it is best to use a lip brush; if your lips are large, the only reason to use a lip brush is to improve your accuracy. If you do choose to work with a lip pencil, always place the color on the actual outline of your mouth. Do not use corrective techniques that make the mouth look larger or longer, especially for daytime makeup. If you try to change the outline of your mouth with a lip pencil by drawing outside the lips, some time later, when your lipstick wears off, the lip liner, which almost always lasts longer than the lipstick, will still be in place and it will look like you missed your lips. Always line the lips following their actual shape, then fill in the lipstick color, using either the tube or a lip brush. What about the center outline of the mouth? Do you round the point of the lips or make the point more obvious? As a general rule, a softer appearance is better than a hard one. Leave the points neither rounded nor pyramid-like—someplace in between with a soft arch is best. To prevent lipstick from gunking up in the corners of the mouth, don’t place lip liner or pencil in that area. Stop before you get to the very corners of the mouth. If you feel doing this makes you look as if you have missed a spot, carefully fill in this area with color using a lip brush, applying only the smallest amount. Lip pencils should never create a contrasting dark, brown, or clearly visible line. Your lip pencil should not appear to be an obvious line that shows up as a colored border around the lipstick. The goal is to have the lipstick and lip pencil meld so that you can’t see where one starts and the other stops. If you wear lip liner and you want to help your lipstick last longer, apply the lip pencil all over the lip area, including the outline of the lips, and then apply your lipstick over it. This extra step puts a more permanent color on the lips so the lipstick won’t wear off as quickly as it normally does. Beyond that, and with the exception of the various lip paints available (such as Max Factor Lipfinity or Cover Girl Outlast), all-day lipstick doesn’t exist. Even these formidable lip paints can present some reapplication issues if you eat oily foods, and there is still the issue of touching up with the moisturizing top coat that accompanies each of these paints. For years the cosmetics industry has been proclaiming new “all-day” or “long-wearing” lipsticks, yet women continually need to reapply their lipstick. To date it remains impossible for 99.9% of all lipsticks to make it past lunch, or even past midmorning, still looking the same as when you first put them on.