This Lip-Contouring Guide Is Essentially Your Cheat Sheet for a Fuller Pout, Sans Needles

I’m not sure that there’s ever been a time in history when people have paid so much attention to their lips.

Brows had their moment in the ’90s and made a comeback within the last few years—from ultra-thin and overplucked to bushy “boy brows”—and skin has undergone eons of extreme beauty trends, from historical nobility coating their faces in lead-laced white powders to today’s glass skin. Now, I’m no beauty historian, but I think it’s safe to say that lips finally got their moment in the limelight when Kylie Jenner rang in her King Kylie era circa 2016 with a drastically fuller pout. Suddenly, everyone and their mothers were clamoring for a Kylie Lip Kit, a shot glass (let us never resurrect that lip-sucking trend), or a filler appointment.

While there was and still is a demand for lip filler, makeup artists have become craftier at faking a fuller pout with the right makeup products and tools—no needles necessary. Because, let’s face it, filler can be expensive, painful, and more maintenance-heavy than lip contouring, the latest lip-enhancing trick in the book.

What Is Lip Contouring?

“Lip contouring is a lip-lining technique that creates the illusion of larger, fuller lips using a cool-toned liner,” says celebrity makeup artist Kasey Spickard, the talent behind Ciara Miller’s and Tayshia Adams’s glossy, full pouts. “It uses the same principles as face contouring, mimicking the natural shadows of a fuller lip.”

Why cool tones, you may ask? Well, it’s no different than contouring your cheekbones or jawline with face makeup, which often has a cooler disposition in order to mimic a shadow. When you use a slightly cool, your-skin-but-deeper lip liner (or your go-to contour product with a small brush) to emphasize where a natural shadow would fall on fuller lips, your pout will immediately look more pronounced.

Is Lip Contour the Same as Lip Liner?

There are thousands of TikTok tutorials that can teach you how to overline your lips, but contour is not to be confused with excessive lip liner. While lip liner is a product that you use to define and enhance the shape of your lips, lip contouring is a technique, and it often does involve lip liner—just not the pink, red, or colorful kinds that you’d use to match your lipstick.

“Contour for the lip is not the same as a liner, but you can achieve lip contouring with lip liner,” explains celebrity makeup artist and brand founder Katie Jane Hughes. “Typically, lip contouring is done with face contour products at the mouth to increase the look of volume,” she adds. The artist behind so many of Dua Lipa’s and Hailey Bieber’s luscious lip looks, the MUA has a few tricks up her sleeve when it comes to makeup optical illusions.