I'm 63, I've been a makeup artist for over three decades, and I'll tell you something I've learned the hard way: the lipstick that worked beautifully on my lips at 40 betrays me almost daily now.
If you've ever swiped on a gorgeous shade in the morning, glanced at yourself in the rearview mirror after a few errands, and seen color creeping into the tiny lines around your mouth — you already know exactly what I'm talking about. That sinking feeling when you realize your lipstick has been doing its own thing for who knows how long.
It's frustrating. It feels like nothing works the way it used to. And for years, I'll admit, even I blamed the lipstick.
But here's the thing I've learned from doing the makeup of women in their 50s, 60s and 70s for over 30 years: the reason lipstick fails on mature lips has almost nothing to do with the lipstick itself. It has to do with what happens before we ever pick up the tube. Once you understand the four-minute sequence I'm about to share, the same lipstick that was bleeding all over your face yesterday can stay put through coffee, lunch, and a long phone call with your sister.
Here are some favorite products I keep in my own kit:
- Aquaphor Lip Repair – A simple, fragrance-free balm that softens dry, flaky lip skin within minutes. The first product I reach for on every client, and at around $5 it's hard to beat.
- NYX Slim Lip Pencil (in "Nude Pink" or "Natural") – A drugstore liner under $5 that doubles as an invisible barrier against bleeding when applied just outside the lip line. I've used this on hundreds of clients.
- Charlotte Tilbury Lip Cheat – My go-to for clients who feel their lips are "disappearing." It subtly redefines the lip line in a way that looks completely natural.
- Stila Stay All Day Liquid Lipstick – When a bride's mother tells me she needs lipstick that survives the entire ceremony and reception, this is what I reach for.
Continue reading and I'll walk you through how to use these together — including the one prep step almost everyone skips.
The two qualities of lipstick that matter most as we get older are how the color wears throughout the day and how it interacts with the skin around our lips. I'll share the simple sequence in a moment, but first we need to talk about why this gets so much harder after 50. Because once you understand it, you stop blaming yourself.
WHY LIPSTICK BLEEDS MORE AS WE GET OLDER
Three things happen to the lip area after 50, and once we understand them, everything else falls into place.
The skin around our mouth thins and loses collagen, creating those tiny vertical lines that lipstick loves to migrate into. The natural lip border — the ridge that used to act like a dam holding color in place — softens and blurs. And our lips themselves get drier because oil production drops, which means lipstick sits on top of flaky skin instead of gliding onto smooth color.
That's not bad news. It just means we need a different approach than the one we used at 30. And honestly, once I accepted that around age 55, my own lipstick started looking better than it had in years.
THE 4-STEP SEQUENCE THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
Most beauty articles skip straight to "use a long-wear formula." I see this advice everywhere. But take it from someone who has tested every long-wear lipstick on the market: long-wear lipstick on unprepped lips is like painting a wall without sanding it first. It'll look streaky in an hour, no matter what brand you bought.
Here's the sequence I use on every client, and on myself.
Step 1: Exfoliate. Take a soft toothbrush or a damp washcloth and gently rub your lips in tiny circles for about 30 seconds. This lifts off the dry flakes that lipstick clings to and pools around. It also wakes up circulation, which gives lips a natural pink flush before you even apply color. I do this every single morning, even on no-makeup days.
Step 2: Hydrate, then blot. Apply a thin layer of Aquaphor or a similar fragrance-free balm. Wait two minutes. Then press a folded tissue gently against your lips. This is the step I see almost everyone get wrong. They skip the blotting and apply lipstick over slick lips, which guarantees the color slides off within an hour. We want hydrated lips, not greasy ones.
Step 3: Line the perimeter — not just the lip itself. This is the trick that nobody taught me in beauty school, and one I figured out from watching how lipstick actually fails. Most of us were shown how to outline our lips and stop there. But lipstick bleeds outward into the lines around the mouth, so we need a barrier just outside the lip line as well.
Take a nude or "invisible" lip pencil and trace lightly around the perimeter — not on the lip, but on the skin just above the cupid's bow and just below the bottom lip. This creates a waxy moat that lipstick physically cannot cross. Then line the actual lip with your color-matched pencil.
Step 4: Fill in the entire lip with pencil first, then add lipstick. If we apply lipstick directly to bare lips, it wears off in the center first — where we eat, drink, and talk most. Filling in the whole lip with pencil first creates a stained base layer. Even when the lipstick wears down, the color underneath stays. This is the difference between fading at 11am and still looking polished at 5pm.
CHOOSING A SHADE THAT ACTUALLY WORKS
Now let's talk about color. Two rules of thumb here, and the second one matters far more than most of my clients realize when they first sit in my chair.
The first rule: for daytime, stay within two shades of your natural lip color. Mature lips look most natural — and most lifted — in shades that enhance rather than overpower. A bright fuchsia that looked playful at 35 can read as harsh at 65, especially in unfiltered daylight. For evenings and special occasions, of course we can go bolder, and I encourage it. But for everyday wear, softer tends to look more elegant on mature skin.
The second rule: match the undertone of your skin, not the trend. If you have cool undertones (veins that look bluish, silver jewelry that flatters you), reach for lipsticks with pink, berry, or blue-red bases. If you have warm undertones (golden veins, gold jewelry that flatters you), look for peach, coral, brick, or warm red bases.
If you wear a shade that fights your undertone, your lips will look correct in photos but somehow off in person, and you may not be able to figure out why.
Don't believe me? Try a quick test in natural light. Hold a cool-toned lipstick beside your face, then a warm-toned one. One will make your skin look fresh and rested. The other will make you look tired. The mirror tells the truth in about four seconds.
I learned this the hard way myself. About 10 years ago I bought what looked like a beautiful neutral nude at the drugstore, brought it home, and somehow looked exhausted every time I wore it. It was a warm-based nude on my cool-toned skin. The day I switched to a cool pink-nude, my husband actually asked if I'd had something done. I hadn't. I'd just changed undertones.
WHAT ABOUT THINNING OR "DISAPPEARING" LIPS?
As our lips lose volume, my clients almost always want to overdraw dramatically. I gently talk them out of it every time. Overdrawn lips on a mature face tend to read as trying-too-hard, especially in person. The eye knows.
The trick isn't to draw a bigger lip. It's to reshape the natural line so the lips read as full again.
The Charlotte Tilbury Lip Cheat pencils were designed for exactly this. The pencil glides just slightly above the natural lip line — we're talking one to two millimeters at most — to create the illusion of plumpness without anyone being able to tell you've done anything.
For very thin or barely-visible lips, focus extra attention on the cupid's bow and the bottom center of the lower lip. A subtle dab of champagne highlighter or a light shadow just above the cupid's bow catches the light and makes the upper lip appear fuller. It takes about 10 seconds and the difference is surprising. I do this on myself every morning.
SPECIAL HELP FOR LIPS THAT STILL FEATHER
If you've tried all of this and lipstick still bleeds, in my experience the problem is almost always one of three things.
The first issue: the prep is off. Either the lips are too dry (you skipped the exfoliation) or too oily (you skipped the blot after balm). Fix the prep and the feathering usually fixes itself.
The second issue: the formula is wrong for your lips. Glossy and creamy formulas migrate easily on mature skin. If feathering is your main complaint, switch to a liquid matte that sets in about 90 seconds — Stila Stay All Day is one of the most reliable I've used — or a long-wear cream lipstick.
The third issue, and this is the one nobody talks about: the lines around your mouth need their own treatment. A lightweight silicone-based primer (any face primer with dimethicone in the top three ingredients works) applied just to the perimeter of the lips before any lip product fills in those tiny vertical lines and stops the migration before it starts. It takes 15 seconds and it works.
I'll be honest with you — none of this is going to give you the lips you had at 25. That isn't what I'm offering, and frankly, I don't think it's what most of us want anyway. What this routine will give you is lipstick that stays where you put it, color that flatters your skin instead of fighting it, and a lip line that looks defined and youthful without looking artificial. That, after 30 years of doing this, is what I've found my clients actually want.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
So once we've found a shade that matches our undertone, the easiest way to make lipstick last is to exfoliate first, hydrate and blot, line the perimeter and the lip line itself, fill the entire lip with pencil, then layer the lipstick on top. The whole sequence takes about four minutes and the results last from morning coffee to evening dinner.
Try it tomorrow morning. I think you'll be surprised.
LET'S HAVE A CONVERSATION
How have your lips changed over the last decade? What's the most frustrating thing about wearing lipstick now compared to when you were younger? Have you found a lipstick or a technique that you swear by? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.