sexy lips with purple ombre style lipstick on tanned skin
Image: Shutterstock/Luba V Nel

Everything You Need To Know About Ombre Lips

You’ve heard of ombre hair. Time to meet ombre lips. If you haven’t seen this style, it’s what it sounds like. It does to lips what ombre does to hair. It’s a coloring technique that works to make the lips multi-toned, yet blended. Usually the edges of the lips are dark and gradually become a brighter or new shade as you get to the middle of the lips. The look could be two different shades of the same color, or go from black to green. It’s truly a customizable look. Below is your guide to getting the perfect ombre lips.

How To Apply Basic Ombre Lips

The look is actually a lot more simple than it appears. Here are the four easy steps:

  1. First gather your supplies: lipstick, a darker shade of lipstick or lip liner, shimmery powdered eye shadow and a brush. The nice part about this look is you can go as dramatic or as subtle as you want. You can have your lip liner contrast for a statement look or you can have lip liner that is only slightly darker than the lipstick.
  2. Apply your lipstick.
  3. Outline with your lip liner. You’ll want to make light movements inward with the pencil to blend the liner with the lipstick.
  4. Brush the eye shadow powder over your lips for an added shimmer. Apply only to the middle of the upper and lower lips for that inner brightness characteristic of the ombre look. Blend well.

See? Easy! But that’s not the only way to get ombre lips.

The Concealer & Gloss Method

This method goes heavy on the outlining. It’s great if you’d really like to accent your lips. It’s also good for dry lips, since you start with a lip hydrator. Here’s how to complete this method:

  1. For your supplies, you’ll need concealer, a lip primer or balm, a darker lip liner, two complementary lipstick shades, a lipstick brush and lip gloss.
  2. Start with applying a lip primer or balm to accent and hydrate the lips.
  3. Apply a heavy line of concealer around your lips and blend inwards toward the lip. That will create a bit of a highlighting effect and is good for covering breakout-prone skin.
  4. Then apply your lip liner. This method requires going thick with it, if you can. Blend inwards slightly.
  5. Right inside the liner, apply your darker shade of lipstick with a brush for precision. Leave the innermost part of the upper and lower lip alone.
  6. Make sure to blend the liner and lipstick slightly with the brush, using light flicks between the liner and lipstick.
  7. Apply the lighter lipstick on the innermost part of the lips. Blend the two lipsticks together with light flicking motions, using your finger.
  8. Apply gloss on top of your lips for an added shimmer.

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