How To Choose The Perfect Lip Liner For Any Lipstick

Lip liner is kind of a big deal. It’s the secret to longer-wearing lipstick, preventing color bleeding, and the key to a fuller-looking pout. With a good lip liner, you can completely change the shape of your lips, add symmetry, and redefine them. But a question we always get asked is ‘how do you choose the right shade of lip liner?’ Obviously, having created hundreds of lipsticks and a ton of lip liners, we’ve got this one in the bag.

Here are our top three tips for choosing the right lip liner shade and our complete guide to finding the right lip liner.

1. Go Darker for a Bolder Look

When you’re choosing a lip liner, it doesn’t need to be the exact same shade, it really depends on the look you’re trying to achieve. For a more dramatic, defined, and sexy lip, then you can go one or two shades deeper than your lipstick but stick to the same shade family. Which brings us on to tip two…

2. Always Go for the Same Color Family

If there’s one rule we really recommend sticking to, it’s to always choose a lip liner in the same color family as your lipstick. For example, if your lipstick has purple undertones, choose a lip liner that also has purple undertones. If you’re using a red lipstick, use a red lip liner, as a pink liner would clash – so although the liner and lipstick don’t need to be identical, it should be in the same shade family.

3. Find Your Perfect Nude

If lip liner is new to you, but you have tons of different lipstick shades, then find your perfect nude shade. Essentially, this means finding a lip liner that’s the exact same shade as your lips. Take a look at your lips: do they have a red, pink, brown or purple undertones? Find a lip liner that looks identical and use this as a base for other lipsticks that aren’t too dissimilar to your natural lip color.

Check out our ultimate guide for finding your perfect Huda Beauty Lip Liner and matching lipstick with our shade matching guide below.

Check out how to get the perfect red lip here.