Just like your skin, your lips too require a little TLC. While lip balms take care of softening your lips, you cannot turn your back on the best lip lightening creams that caters to pigmentation and darkness. Whether it’s smoking, the effects of harsh sun rays, constant lip gnawing, or regular dehydration and stress, numerous factors affect the texture and color of your lips and lead to lip pigmentation. Even genetics have a role to play in pigmented lips (1).

Dark and pigmented lips are quite common due to environmental aggressors like pollution and sun exposure, but with proper care, you can lighten them. Let’s face it, we all intend on having naturally pink lips with no sunspots or pigmentation. And to cater to our needs, there is a plethora of the best lip lightening creams in the market which can help you achieve luscious pink lips. Packed with highly beneficial ingredients to lighten the pigmentation, these lightening creams for lips can come in quite handy! We handpicked 5 of the best lip-lightening creams from the market and listed them below for you. Scroll away -

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  Best Long-Lasting Formula

  Burt's Bees Overnight Intensive Lip Treatment

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Give your lips an intense 8-hours long moisture with the Burt's Bees Overnight Intensive Lip Treatment. Packed with the goodness of ceramides, sea minerals, vitamin C, and vitamin E, the formula makes sure you wake up with well-nourished and healthy lips. This lightening cream for lips conditions, smoothens, hydrates, and helps support and restore your lip's natural moisture barrier overnight while you sleep. In a jiffy, you can reduce fine lines and make your lips appear more flushed and healthy looking. The cream is free from phthalates, SLS, petrolatum, or any other toxins and is formulated with natural ingredients.

Quick Tip

Religiously apply this balm under your lipstick to hydrate the skin. It prevents any damage caused by chemicals in lip products. This step hydrates the skin and restores its natural color.

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Best Organic Lip Cream

Omorfee Lip Lightening Salve Lip Balm

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Formulated with 100% natural ingredients, the Omorfee Lip Lightening Salve Lip Balm promises to eradicate lip discoloration and pigmentation. This lip-lightening cream is enriched with carrot seed oil, organic cocoa butter, almond oil, and pineapple extract. These potent ingredients work in sync to reduce pigmentation caused by smoking, UV rays, pollution, and excess use of chemical-based products on the lips.

Carrot seed oil is rich in antioxidant properties which restore the natural color of your lips by repairing the damaged tissues of the lips caused by smoking or other external factors. Cocoa butter and almond oil boost intense hydration and make your lips softer. While the aromatic pineapple extract gives you a pleasant and soothing application.

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Best Tropical Fragrance

Jaowying Beauty Pomegranate Lightening Lip Balm

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Restore your natural lip color with the Jaowying Beauty Pomegranate Lightening Lip Balm. It is specifically formulated to lighten a smoker’s lips and pigmentation lines. The formula is enriched with pomegranate extracts, shea butter, and vitamin B3. This lip lightening cream lifts off pigmentation and darkness from your lips and boosts natural color. Vitamin B3 in this formula helps in balancing uneven skin tone by promoting cell renewal while shea butter boosts long-lasting hydration and softness. Pomegranate helps in adding a subtle pink tint to the formula along with a lingering tropical aroma.The cream’s smooth consistency is easy to apply with a non-greasy and non-sticky texture. With regular use, the cream makes sure to give you lighter and naturally pink lips.

Quick Tip

Use this lip balm as a lip primer under makeup. The soft tint settles pigmentation while nourishing the delicate skin. It reduces dryness and darkness.

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For Supple Lips

Dermelect Smooth Upper Lip & Perioral Anti-Aging Lip Treatment

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Try out the Dermelect Smooth Upper Lip & Perioral Anti-Aging Lip Treatment to achieve naturally plump and soft lips. With a combination of highly potent ingredients, this lip lightening cream even tones the lips to eradicate pigmentation and signs of aging. It is formulated with hyaluronic filling spheres, arbutin, retinol, GABA, and collagen.

It also contains matrixyl 3000, which is a multi-peptide that is clinically proven to reduce fine lines and wrinkles, while hyaluronic filling promotes hydration and arbutin helps in skin brightening. It is an agent extracted from the bearberry plant, which along with retinol improves skin tone and softens dry patches. Whereas, GABA and collagen work in coherence to visibly smooth expression and fine lines and moisturize your lips. This fragrance-free lip cream does not contain toxins, SLS or SLES, paraben, phthalates, or gluten.

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Best For Dark Lips

Derma Pan Lip Dark Spot Remover

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Get luscious pink lips with the Derma Pan Lip Dark Spot Remover. This is one of the highly sought-after lip lightener cream which transforms your highly pigmented dark lips into light pink natural-looking lips. It has a gel-like formula that works as an overnight treatment care as well as a lip balm during the day. This formula is highly effective for dark lips and also those that have been affected by regular smoking. It also treats dried and chapped lips and efficiently softens them with just a couple of uses. The lip cream can also be used to treat sun spots. It is odor-less, free from mercury and has no harmful toxins.

With so many products you can happily bid adieu to pigmented and dark lips. However, there are a few factors that one must consider before investing in the best lip lightening cream. Here are a few things to look for in a lip-lightening cream -

Ingredients
While tackling lip darkness and pigmentation, one must consider ingredients that have even toning properties. Go for products that contain one or any of these ingredients that boost melanin — powerful pomegranate extracts, brightening pineapple extracts, or the beneficial beetroot extracts. You can also look for lavender, strawberry, lemon, cucumber juice, turmeric, rose water, etc. These are not only known as melanin inhibitors but also help in softening your lips and enhancing their texture.

Formula
When picking a cream to lighten your lips, it is also important to consider its formula to help enhance your lips. Look for properties such as moisturizing, anti-aging, and collagen boosters. Opt for a formula that has beeswax, coconut oil, vitamin E, shea butter, avocado oil, or peppermint oil which are loaded with hydrating properties. However, make sure the formula isn’t too greasy, sticky, or has an unpleasant odor as it might cause discomfort.

Chemicals
While most ingredients in lip lightening creams are skin-friendly, still it is best to read through the fine print on the label. The onus is on us to be completely sure that the lip brightening creams dont contain any harmful chemicals. It should be free of any SLES or phthalates. Other things to consider as red flags are alcohols and paraffin. Also, salicylic acid should be given a miss. These tend to dry out your lips and aggravate the pigmentation.  

Easy to use
Most lip-lightening creams come in tubes or tiny containers. Look for the one that is convenient for you to use. While tubes or sticks are easy to apply, some prefer containers that enable you to scoop out more products. It is best to pick a product that can be used both during the day as well as an overnight treatment. 

Shelf life
Lip creams are something you don’t use in excess and they may last for months. Rather than buying many packs of lip care kits just because they were on sale or because you fear that they will be out of stock, it is better to buy them according to their expiry date.You certainly dont want to apply formulas that are outdated and have gone past their ripe days.

Pro Tip

Ensure your lip balm has at least SPF 20 to prevent pigmentation caused due to sun exposure. This also helps in reducing darkness caused due to chemicals.

• To start with, wash your lips to remove makeup or any other residue and pat them dry.
• Apply a thin layer of the lip lightener cream on your lips.
• Gently rub your upper and bottom lip together to evenly coat your lips with the lip lightening cream.
• Avoid licking or biting your lips as the formula may wear off.

Most dermatologists recommend that you apply a lip lightener cream at least twice a day or as needed, but it is best to include it in your nighttime skin routine. Using a lip cream at night allows it to work overnight without any intruding factors such as eating, talking, or drinking.

Having soft and pink lips is a goal for many and with the best lip lightening cream, the goal doesn’t seem far-fetched! Some factors like smoking, hormonal changes, or heavy exposure to the sun can obstruct melanin production and lead to pigmentation. We hope this curated list and its fantastic options has inspired you to pick a few of the lip care products and say goodbye to pigmented lips. These not only help in lightening your lips but also have nourishing properties which cater to chapped and dry lips along with signs of aging, so that you can always flaunt that pout with confidence!  While the above-listed products are made with high-quality ingredients, it is best to do a patch test to avoid any allergic reaction or rashes.