Dry lips are a fact of life, thanks to the lips’ uniquely delicate skin. Plenty of remedies promise relief—but when it’s time to choose, which lip balm or moisturizer really works best?
It comes often, and is never welcome. You feel it slowly at first—a roughing that proceeds to a hardening. Then, suddenly, what once was soft and vital now feels plastic, peeling, and painful. The discomfort is actually visible on your face: Your lips are chapped.
Chapping, or dryness of the lips, happens to everyone. Literally: No matter your skin type, be it oily, dry, or combination, the skin on lips is prone to dry out regularly as a side effect of being a living and breathing human person. For one, the skin on your lips doesn’t behave the same as the rest of the face: it is structurally different. But even more crucially, there are few other parts of skin that see so much day to day action, from speech to sustenance. In other words, many things cross the threshold of our lips. Why wouldn’t you give them special care?
Fortunately, there are remedies that both repair and prevent terrible lip dryness: The lip balm. They are easy to use, and widely accessible—to the extent that it may require some guidance to find the best one.
What Is Lip Balm?
If the great cosmetic inventions of our time were to be collected in a museum, lip balms would have their own wing—so important are they to skincare. This is only a little bit of an overstatement. Lip balm is, according to dermatologists, one of the main necessary steps in a skincare routine. Lip care is especially in the winter season for reasons we’ll discuss below. But they are one of the few beauty products that are found in the bags, pockets, and makeup kits of most of us, even those who profess to not care about beauty at all.
According to internet historians, ancient peoples kept their lips moisturized using a variety of different substances, some cruder than others. In the Middle East, there was livestock fat. In the Mediterranean, there was olive oil. Some women in ancient Japan used an extract of peach kernel to keep their lips soft.
But the contemporary lip balm, defined as a mixture of waxes and other emollients that moisturize lips, is a bit younger, and was invented just before the turn of the century. As the story goes, an inventor named Charles Browne Fleet mixed up camphor, petrolatum, wax, and other ingredients, distilled it into a tin, and called it “ChapStick.” He sold the formula to his friend, whose wife suggested the tube shape that endures in the lip balm category today.
Though many lip balms come in tubes, you can also find them in tins—and jars, pots, and even tiny compacts. You can also find them cast with different colors, or formulated with different ingredients. A lip balm is simply an emollient that prevents lip dryness. And though you may notice commonalities between balms, there’s just as much variety. Finding the best lip balm for chapped lips takes a little help.
Do I Need Lip Balm?
Dermatologists say: You should use lip balm.
Of course, they also recommend a daily skincare routine, in which the skin on your face is properly cleaned and moisturized. It makes sense that they’d also recommend applying that moisture to your lips. But their advice is more emphatic when you consider the differences between the skin on your face and the skin on your lips.
Cutaneously speaking, the lips provide the border between the outer stratum corneum layer of skin and the inner mucous membrane that lines our mouths. Compared to the skin on your cheek, the skin on your lips is much thinner. It’s also absent of oil glands that allow other parts of the skin to self-moisturize. The moisturization has to come from somewhere else.
One thing that unites all skin on the body, including that of the lips: It ages naturally. Proper lip skincare, including moisturizing the lips and protecting them with SPF and reparative skincare ingredients can help delay the formation of wrinkles and folds, as well as keep dryness at bay.
Lip Balm vs. Lip Moisturizer
The terms “lip balm” and “lip moisturizer” both describe products used to moisturize the lips, and are sometimes used interchangeably. If a lip balm moisturizes lips, isn’t it a lip moisturizer? The answer is yes, but it’s important to understand how the terms refer to different things.
Like the famous one invented by Charles Fleet, lip balms are generally thick, emollient formulas that get much of their texture from waxy substances like petroleum jelly. When applied to skin, they form an occlusive barrier that helps trap moisture in lips—in other words, it moisturizes them.
All lip balms are lip moisturizers. But not all lip moisturizers are balms. Lips can be moisturized by creams, oils, and jellies. They can even be moisturized by animal fat. This much wider category of lip skin care provides different textures to play with. Thicker balms tend to be more popular because their high efficacy reduces the need for reapplications. But if you’re looking for the best lip moisturizer, and not preferential to a balm, you may be curious about these other forms of lip care.
Types of Lip Balms
Below are a few varieties of lip balm that you’re likely to encounter at the beauty aisle. All of these can be described as lip balms (and thus lip moisturizers), but exactly how they work—and when they’re applied—may depend on what particular shape they take.
Petroleum Jelly-Based
A topical byproduct of petroleum refining, petroleum jelly has been a staple of the American moisturizer diet since the Industrial Revolution. This colorless, slippery, highly emollient gel makes for a very popular lip balm, but is also applied to other areas where skin dryness is common, like elbows and knees.
Overnight Lip Masks
To compare lip balms vs. lip masks, a lip balm is waxy and meant to seal in lip moisture, while a lip mask is something like a souped-up moisturizer. Instead of letting it sink into the skin, the point of a lip mask is to let it sit on top, which is why they’re often recommended to be worn as you sleep. If you’re particularly prone to dryness, a light layer can also be worn in the daytime, too.
Tinted Lip Balms
As the name explains, these lip balms apply a subtle tint to lips—usually one that is less intense than can be provided from a makeup product like a lipstick or lip stain. For natural makeup lovers, the best tinted lip balms offer the perfect low maintenance skincare-makeup combination.
The Best Lip Balms & Moisturizers
In 2018, the skincare brand Tatcha launched its Kissu lip line with a juicy jelly mask. Recently, it expanded to comprise a curated collection of lip care essentials for both daywear and night repair. Time-honored Japanese ingredients meet contemporary skincare technology; together they also happen to make some of the very best Japanese lip balms and moisturizers.
For Day: Lip Balm With SPF
Does your lip balm have sun protection? Among its other recommendations, the Skin Cancer Foundation advises applying a lip sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15 before heading out into the day. Tatcha’s brand-new Kissu Lip Tint SPF 25 makes this a lovely ritual — and also makes reapplications easy; its botanical moisturizers, silk and lanolin, help the stick to glide on, dressing lips in one of three buildable shades.
For Night: A Healing Lip Mask
The best-selling Kissu Lip Mask distills the timeless lip-healing power of Japanese peach extract into a round pot of gloss. Alongside peach, the mask is also made with squalane, a common and high-performing natural hydrator, and camellia oil, a lightweight, vitamin-rich skin-sealant; together, they harmonize into maximum moisture. The best lip mask should be easy to apply and provide overnight results. As one beauty editor noted, the Kissu Lip Mask puts in the work: “It glided along my lips without feeling sticky, tacky, or too oily and left behind a shine on par with a lip gloss. When I woke up the next morning, my lips felt soft and pillowy.” And it lasted, too.