13 Types of Lips: How to Apply Makeup on Each Type of Lips? 2024

You might know one or more people in your life whose whole makeup regime revolves around adorning their lips only.In fact, women often give more importance to their lip makeup than they do to their eye makeup. There is a reason for giving lips more attention than other facial features and this reason lies in the prominence of this feature. Not only that, but we’ve got hundreds of lipstick shades and textures to choose from. This variety makes experimenting with your style more fun, right? If you have spent some time searching about the different types of lips shapes, you might have appreciated till now that seven of these shapes take prominence.

But if we look at the height and size of the lip more closely, we can identify twelve different types of lips. Some of them are considered more desired while others just become beautiful when combined with overall face structure.

But don’t let this myth of desirability dissuade you from loving the lips – or any other facial or bodily feature – you have gotten. They are only as beautiful as they are loved – by none other than you.

Now that we have busted the greatest myth of beauty, can we move toward exploring these types of lips?

Types of Lips:

• Heart-Shaped Lips
• Thin Lips
• Full Lips
• Goldilocks Lips
• Thick Lips
• Wide Lips
• Top Heavy Lips
• Bottom Heavy Lips
• Small Lips
• Round Lips
• Bow Shaped Lips
• Plump Centered Lips

Let’s learn how we classify them and how you can apply makeup to them thus attracting as much attention to them as they deserve.

1. Heart-Shaped Lips

Yes, I am talking about this most loved kind of lips.

Why are they loved? It’s because they are fuller. Not only that, but they also enjoy another beloved feature which is defined as Cupid’s bow.

The middle part of these lips is heavier and the bottom lip rounder and usually distinctively fuller than the upper lip.

Makeup Tip: You would want to draw attention towards this highlight of your facial features. To further emphasize it, use darker shades and stick to a single color for both top and bottom lips.

You can get the most beauty out of its fullness by using a nude lipstick shade in the middle.

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2. Thin Lips

As the name suggests, thin lips are thin. You don’t get much space or volume in either top or bottom lip. They give a subtle tightness to your features.

These lips may represent passion and strength but they make a difficult type when it comes to applying makeup.

Makeup Tip: Resist the temptation to go glossy. These lips are better off with smudgy shades.

Start with a lip pencil. You may want to overline them so they appear heavier. After lining them, fill them with the same pencil shade. Once you have filled the lips, dab them gently – remember, you want them more natural.

You can choose to replace the use of lip pencil with matte colors after the lining step is over. But dabbing them is the key to getting the right finish.

Also, using a darker shade for the bottom lip makes it look plumper.

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3. Full Lips

These lips get the most balanced proportion of fullness between the top and bottom lips. Because of this balance, we often call them perfectly proportioned lips.

There is a tie between the desirability of heart-shaped and full lips. Still, more importance remains in the way you carry them. Let’s see what works best with perfectly balanced lips.

Makeup Tip: There are two ways to manage these lips. First, you can make them the center of your appearance. Secondly, you can distract the attention by highlighting other features of your face.

If you choose the first style, go with the darker shade in matte.

In the second, use subtle shades. You can choose nude colors or other subtle colors that go light with other shades you are using in facial makeup. Other strategies to distract attention away from lips include doing heavy eye makeup or highlighting the cheeks.

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4. Goldilocks Lips

These lips lie somewhere between thin lips and full lips. They are neither too thin nor too thick but have medium height. Most usually, they lack a defined Cupid’s bow. You may want to draw attention to them or if you decide on leaving them as a minor feature, even that can work out well.

Makeup Tip: Go for the glossy formulas. Lighter colors will make them most attractive and plump. If you want to give more attention to your lips, you can choose to overline them.

5. Thick Lips

These lips are similar to the full lips in the sense that there is a balance between the top and bottom lips. The only difference is in their thickness. Against full lips, they are thicker and fuller.

Because of their size, their tendency to keep the onlookers hooked is undeniable. You may want to distract the attention from your lips towards other facial features if you’ve got thick lips.

Makeup Tip: Subtle shades make the most likely friendly candidate as they will help to blend your lips with your skin tone. Try nude shades by choosing those hues which are a couple of shades darker than your skin tone.
Choose brighter colors for eye makeup or highlight the cheeks.

6. Wide Lips

So, the confident and welcoming smile that you tend to offer your others is a gift of your wide lips? You can determine this by complementing your smile in the mirror. Is your smile broader than most people’s? If your peers comment that your smile is ear to ear, that may be another indication of these lips which make a trademark of extroverts.

You don’t want to distract the attention from your smile – after all, they are welcoming people to open up to you. But it would definitely help if you add a little plump to them and eliminate some width. That’s the goal of lip makeup you are going to apply to wide lips.

Makeup Tip: One way to eliminate width and keep the focus on the fullness of the lips is overlining. A better strategy is to overline only the bottom lip giving it more weight.

A simple way to distract attention from lips without distracting it from a smile is by applying nude colors.
You may also highlight your cheeks to balance out the attention.

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7. Top Heavy Lips

Unsurprisingly, these lips have a prominent top lip that is fuller than the bottom lip. Usually, this shape also lacks adequately defined Cupid’s bow.

The goal of your lip makeup should be to balance out the difference in the fullness of both lips.

Makeup Tip: You can start with a lip liner to define boundaries. Use this step to give more plump to your bottom lip than your outer lip. Although it’s not necessary, you can choose to use concealer or foundation to make your top lip slightly smaller before lining it.

Overlining the bottom lip is another not-so-surprising tip.

You can give further plump to your bottom lip by using a lighter shade for it. Or if you are adamant about using the same shade apply gloss in its center. Alternatively, applying a white pencil at the center of the bottom lip will give the same result.

8. Bottom Heavy Lips

These lips, characterized by a visible imbalance between the top and bottom lips are more desired than the previous types of lips.

Note that perfectly proportioned lips also feature a slight difference between top and bottom lips but this difference is much more pronounced in bottom-heavy lips. In turn, you want to give them the balance they lack and one way to do this is to make the top lip fuller.

Makeup Tip: You can apply the same makeup tip as we discussed in the former kind of lips – using gloss or white pencil to add weight to the lip. The only difference is that now you would want to add fullness to the top lip instead of the bottom one.

You can also use foundation to slightly blur the line of the bottom lip so they don’t appear as protruding.
Liquid lip colors will work best here.

9. Small Lips

The prominent feature of these lips is their limited width. In most cases, they are also full and protruding.
Their small size couples with their fullness to present the best pout you would ever see.

Unlike wider lips, your goal here is to make these lips attract attention.

Makeup Tip: Small lips make the best candidate for glossy hues. So, if you are blessed with these beauties, you are allowed to ditch matte formulas.

As a rule of thumb, you should prefer lighter shades than dark ones as the latter tend to make the lips appear even smaller.

10. Round Lips

The defining feature of these lips is a small Cupid’s bow.

Another feature you would notice about these lips is a surprising balance between the height and width of these lips. In other words, if you feel that your lips are almost as wide as they are high – or are only slightly wider – your lips are included among round ones.

Unsurprisingly, you would be concerned about adding width to your already full lips while applying lipstick.

Makeup Tip: You may want to overline at the edges of your lips. As you go towards the middle, sticking to a natural lip line will work.

For color selections, know that darker hues are better for accentuating the peaked pout you already have. Get a glossy formula to retain the much-deserved attention.

11. Bow Shaped Lips

These lips are known for their defined Cupid’s bow. Now, if you are wondering what is the difference between heart-shaped and bow-shaped lips, know that it lies in the bottom lip’s appearance. The heart-shaped bottom lip has somewhat pointedness in the middle. This point is missing in bow-shaped lips.

Nevertheless, the high Cupid’s bow makes these lips among the most attractive types of lips.

Your only makeup goal is to keep the attention on this facial feature.

Makeup Tip: Feel free to experiment. Darker shades are your best pal. You can also use nude colors to give a smudged look to the middle of the lips to further enhance the plump.

You can choose to add glamour to your Cupid’s bow or distract the attention by softening this outline. Most of the lip makeup styles should look fine with it.

12. Plump Centered Lips

These lips, again, make a great candidate of attention in the holder’s face. They have plump centers but their corners are relatively thinner.

Makeup Tip: Most of the makeup styling is done by nature for you if you have plump-centred lips. But here are a few tips to get an even better look.

Use gloss to attract attention to these lips. You can experiment with colors with most shades working in favor of these lips.

Plus, you might also want to use lip liner to further define the structure.

13. Fuller Lips

How To Take Care of Your Lips

You might be blessed with the loveliest lips in the world, but if you don’t take care of this gift, they might not appear as beautiful as they deserve to be. The type of lips shape you have gotten has a say only in how you apply makeup.

Beyond that, every lip type is beautiful and can be enhanced and beautified with proper care, nutrition, and routine.

Here are a few tips to keep your lips young, healthy, and cared for.

Live healthily. Adopt a balanced diet and a disciplined lifestyle. Exercise, hydrate, and nourish your body mindfully. If you witness excessively chapped lips even when you are hydrated, get yourself checked for underlying medical conditions.

Never leave makeup overnight. After whipping the lipstick or lip shade with makeup remover, use balm to restore the moisture. Or you can choose to use homemade lip cream to provide much-needed moisture.

Develop a lip care routine. You would want to keep your lips clean. Every night pamper your lips with lip balm. In the morning, exfoliate dead skin using a damp washcloth. It will not only clean your lips but also helps with the circulation of blood making your lips more youthful.

Add a natural lip scrub to your lip care routine. Options can be lemon juice, strawberry-based scrub, honey, or olive oil.

Use sunscreen on lips to slow down aging.

Be mindful while picking lip shades and balms. You wouldn’t want toxins to seep into your beloved facial features. Plant dyes are better to start the makeup regime.

Take Away

Diversity is the essence of beauty among the human race. The same is true for human lips. We can see that every man and woman carries a distinct lips structure thanks to their lip shape and lip pattern – or lines on these lips.
If we leave the finer details of thickness, patterns, and width at rest, we can broadly categorize lips in twelve different categories. The most prominent of these shapes include heart-shaped lips, thin lips, full lips, broad lips, bow-shaped lips.

This knowledge of types of lips helps us decide the lips makeup we should prefer.