A swipe of a punchy red lipstick is one of the easiest ways to instantly look and feel more put-together—but flawless application is easily hindered by dry lips. While lip balm can certainly help stave off dryness, a truly parched, flaky pout may need the help of a lip scrub. “A lip scrub is an exfoliating agent to soften and smooth the lips,” explains Howard Sobel, MD, board-certified dermatologist and clinical attending cosmetic dermatologic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, NY.
Vogue’s Favorite Lip Scrubs:
As dead skin cells build up on the surface, your lips can take on a rough texture, which is exacerbated when you are dehydrated, get too much sun, or exposed to harsh, dry air. To really rehab lips, you’ll need to exfoliate and moisturize. This is what makes lip scrubs such a valuable step of a lip routine: “A good lip scrub helps buff away dead skin and infuses your lips with much-needed hydration,” says Nazanin Saedi, MD, board-certified dermatologist and clinical associate professor at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. Sure, you could just use a damp washcloth to buff away chapped skin, but a well-made lip scrub will do so more gently while simultaneously saturating your lips with nourishment.
In This Article:
Best Overall: Fresh Sugar Lip Scrub
- Why We Love It: This formula is a longtime favorite of Saedi’s due to its comprehensive formula. “The brown sugar is both a gentle exfoliant, helping get rid of dull, dry skin, and a humectant to attract water,” she says. The formula also contains potent moisturizers like jojoba and shea to leave lips soft and smooth.
- Key Ingredients: Sugar, jojoba seed oil, shea butter
- Size: 0.35 oz.
Best Gentle: iS Clinical Lip Polish
- Why We Love It: Sobel cites this formula as being a gentle option to soothe, soften, and relieve cracked lips. That’s because it contains intensive emollients like cocoa seed and shea butters as well as vitamin E and jojoba oil, all of which work together to comfort and nourish a dry pout.
- Key Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa seed butter, shea butter
- Size: 0.5 oz.
Best for Travel: Dior Lip Sugar Scrub Sweet Exfoliating Lip Balm
- Why We Love It: This silky balm studded with ultra-fine sugar is packaged in a stick format, which is both convenient and considerate. In addition to making the formula easy to use on the go without the risk of contamination from your fingers, “this design helps prevent the unwanted effects of scrubbing or rubbing a lip scrub in too hard,” explains Saedi. Evans adds that this product is fairly mild and can make the lips look plumper; if you’re someone who can’t resist the feeling of freshly-exfoliated lips, this gentler scrub may be suitable for more frequent use.
- Key Ingredients: Sugar, synthetic beeswax, mango seed butter
- Size: 0.12 oz.
Best Luxury: La Mer The Lip Polish
- Why We Love It: This luxe scrub features La Mer’s signature “Miracle Broth” ingredient complex, which boasts a blend of seaweed extracts, vitamins, and minerals to help revitalize lackluster lips as well as very fine sugar crystals to slough away dead skin. We also especially appreciate that this product comes with an applicator to scoop the formula out of the jar. Its tip is lightly textured, too, so you’ll get double the exfoliating action with just one step.
- Key Ingredients: Sugar, shea butter, algae extracts
- Size: 0.5 oz.
Best Korean: COSRX Honey Sugar Lip Scrub
- Why We Love It: With ingredients like sugar, honey, and cacao, this product sounds more like a dessert than a beauty product, but we can confirm it’s both a treat for your senses and your lips. Honey is a natural humectant, working to draw water into the skin, while shea butter seals in that hydration.
- Key Ingredients: Sugar, shea butter, honey
- Size: 0.7 oz.
Best Flavored: Sara Happ The Lip Scrub
- Why We Love It: This nourishing formula features a blend of light yet powerful moisturizers, including jojoba, grapeseed, and vitamin E. “Vitamin E is a key ingredient—it helps to moisturize the lips,” says Sobel. The scrub also comes in a variety of delectable flavors, like pink grapefruit and vanilla bean, to add a little something extra to your lip care routine.
- Key Ingredients: Sugar, jojoba seed oil, grapeseed oil
- Size: 0.5 oz.
Best Clean: Burt’s Bees Conditioning Lip Scrub
- Why We Love It: “This is great because it is formulated with honey to remove any dry and rough skin,” says Sobel. It does so courtesy of crystallized honey, which does double duty here as an exfoliant and humectant. It also contains rich moisturizers like castor oil, lanolin, and (of course) beeswax to stave off dryness.
- Key Ingredients: Honey, castor oil, lanolin
- Size: 0.25 oz.
Do lip scrubs really work?
Yes, absolutely. “They exfoliate dry, flaking, and cracked skin to soften and smooth the lips that have become dry and peeling from cold, wind, or sunburn,” says Sobel. The removal of this dead skin creates a smooth, even canvas for your favorite lip color. Using a lip scrub can also make your pout temporarily appear rosier and fuller, because exfoliating promotes blood circulation.
What to Look For in a Lip Scrub
One of the most important aspects of a lip scrub is the actual “scrub” itself, the exfoliant used in the formula. While you may be tempted to look for a product that contains chemical exfoliants like those found in your favorite face peels, Tracy Evans, MD, MPH, board-certified dermatologist and medical director of Pacific Skin and Cosmetic Dermatology in San Francisco, CA, advises against this. “Look for mild exfoliants such as sugar or salt—no harsh acids like alpha- and beta-hydroxy acids,” she says. The skin of the lips is very thin and delicate, and those actives are too irritating.
You’ll find that most lip scrubs on the market (and all of the formulas featured in this article) rely on sugar to slough away dead skin. Sugar’s a good fit for lip scrubs because its granules can range from coarse to fine, allowing for a more vigorous or gentle scrub, and—unlike the sand or crushed shells you might find in your body scrub—sugar can be safely consumed if you end up licking your lips after you exfoliate. (And yes, salt is an effective lip exfoliant, but it’s not nearly as tasty.) Additionally, you’ll want to look for ingredients that hydrate and moisturize the lips. Sobel points to honey, jojoba oil, shea butter, and vitamin E as effective options.