How to get bigger lips without filler for a natural look
Glaringly obvious ‘trout pout lip’ fillers are losing their appeal. But there are other effective ways to get naturally fuller, plumper lips. Here are 11 we rate
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Lip fillers have moved on from the exaggerated duck lips we’ve seen on the likes of Meg Ryan, Katie Price and select Real Housewives, and that’s largely thanks to better products, more refined techniques and a raft of cosmetic doctors able to achieve natural and undetectable results. Still, one person’s ‘natural’ is another’s trout pout, and there’s an increasing demand for alternative ways to enhance and plump – as cosmetic physician Dr Sarah Tonks has seen. If you want ‘your lips, only better’ (or dare we say more youthful-looking?), “there is an arsenal of techniques that can do this beautifully, without a drop of filler in sight,” she says.
Alternative injectables that won’t ‘inflate’ your lips include collagen biostimulators such as polynucleotides and PDLLA (poly-D, L-lactic acid), as well as skin boosters, good for deep, long-term hydration and making lips look juicy. Meanwhile, lasers can resurface and smooth the lips and improve barcode lines around the mouth.
At-home tech is booming in the form of LED lip masks, which have gone viral on TikTok, after actor Julianne Moore used the dummy-shaped Currentbody Skin LED Lip Mask, £189.99, on-set in the Netflix show Sirens.
Photographs: MACALL POLAY/NETFLIX
Skincare has stepped up too with plumping peptides, polishing exfoliators that improve product penetration and light reflection, and hydrators that add fullness. Tried-and-tested make-up tricks can give the illusion of bigger lips as well.
Here are the latest and best ways to get bigger and fuller lips without filler.
Lip polynucleotides for collagen boosting
Nano Droplet Lips with Dr Paris Acharya, from £550
Polynucleotides are biostimulating injections: instead of adding instant volume, they rev up collagen production to restore natural volume over time. Dr Paris Acharya uses Plinest Newest, which combines polynucleotides with very liquid hyaluronic acid for hydration and very subtle instant volume. It’s all injected as ‘nano-droplets’ into the lips as well as in barcode lines to achieve a youthful plumpness, not volume. Two-to-three treatments, a month apart, are needed, with results lasting up to a year.
Anaesthetic is a major consideration here as, unlike some other injectables, polynucleotides don’t contain the numbing agent lidocaine. You may be more comfortable if your practitioner uses not just numbing cream but anaesthetic injections too. Dual qualified as a dentist, Dr Paris is trained to administer a dental block, which numbs the area entirely. “Not everyone needs this but it makes it much more comfortable,” she says.
Dr Paris says that her Nano-Droplet technique, which uses a tiny insulin syringe, avoids the very noticeable (but temporary) lip swelling that GTG’s Victoria grappled with for a couple of days when she had polynucleotide lip injections treatment.
She adds: “If you have more extensive signs of ageing, or if you’re trying to address volume and lines, I’d recommend a lip booster in addition to polynucleotides for optimal results.” (See below).
Book nowLip boosters for dry lips
Belotero Revive with Dr Sarah Tonks, from £695
Hydrating skin boosters are injectables, but, unlike fillers, they don’t inflate your lips. They flood the skin with long-lasting moisture, which can work particularly well for a tight, dehydrated lip and upper lip fine lines. Belotero Revive is glycerol-based (a hydrating ingredient) and a particular favourite of Dr Sarah Tonks, as the hydration lasts longer than other boosters – up to nine months. It can soften pigmentation too.
It’s jabbed into the lips and nose-to-lip area in a grid pattern. I can name things that are more fun. Three initial treatments, a month apart (with top-ups every six to nine months), are required and each time, you end up with subtly juicier lips that basically look ten years younger. There is no overt swelling, as can happen with polynucleotides.
While skin quality improves, your long-term plumpness doesn’t. Many patients eventually upgrade to Belotero Soft, a very light filler “which does give a miniscule amount of volume – once patients have experienced that initial plumpness from the booster, they often want more”. I have to admit I considered this as well, but chickened out.
Book nowThe one-and-done laser lip lift for barcode lines
Ultraclear with Dr David Jack, £1650
Most doctors agree ‘barcode’ or smoker’s lines are best tackled by resurfacing the nose-to-lip area. This boosts natural collagen to thicken the skin and smooth out texture while adding a modicum of optical volume (thicker, less-lined skin looks ‘softer’ and plumper; less raisin-like!) to the lip line. CO2 ablative laser is widely used for this, but comes with up to a month’s worth of downtime.
The new kid on the block is the Ultraclear laser, which reduces downtime to a week and is on offer at Dr David Jack‘s fleet of clinics. It bores tiny holes into the nose-to-mouth area (under anaesthetic) to remove a superficial layer. It will cause quite a bit of redness and peeling, so it’s not for the faint-hearted. Expect significantly less-deep lines from one treatment though; results will show after a few months. Ultraclear is safe for every skin tone.
There are no-downtime laser lip lifts (such as Nd:Yag) and these work by creating micro-injuries under the skin in order to slowly induce collagen regeneration. They require multiple sessions (often amounting to a higher price than a single ablative session) and, judging from colleagues’ experiences, results are often underwhelming.
Book now‘Needle-free’ injections for barcode lines
Nova Jet and PDLLA with Dr Tapan Patel, from £395 per treatment
A promising new option for smoker’s lines is the Nova Jet, a needle free ‘jet injector’ gun that can blast active ingredients into the dermis under high pressure, and can precision-target individual lines.
“The small amount of trauma to the skin surface and base of the lip lines from the gun will in itself boost collagen,” says Dr Tapan Patel. “But use it to infuse a biostimulator like poly-d lactic acid (PDLLA), that dramatically increases collagen production to smooth out lines, and you will really see them improve after about three months.”
With numbing cream, it doesn’t really hurt, and you end up with red pinprick blotches in the area (along, likely, with some swelling) that could last up to five days. Two to three sessions are recommended.
Book nowThe Botox lip lift
Lip flip with Dr Wassim Taktouk, from £295
Botox injections do not offer any volume, but judiciously placed in the lip area, they can give the impression of fuller lips. A few tiny drops in the top lip line (not pleasant but bearable) stop your top lip ‘rolling in’ and disappearing when you smile. Plus, with more of the lip surface visible, lips look slightly fuller but not puffed up, so even people without gummy smiles have embraced this ‘lip flip’ as an alternative to fillers. The treatment is offered by a host of practitioners, including Dr Wassim Taktouk.
It doesn’t cause any temporary over-inflation and is one tweakment I have regularly, despite eating yogurt or soup becoming quite a palaver with the loss of muscle function in my top lip. For me, it’s possibly the most subtle enhancer around. GTG’s Isla, 26, who was self-conscious about her thin upper lip and never wore lipstick, felt transformed by hers. You can read her lip flip review and see her before and after pictures.
Book nowThe semi-permanent lip colour
Lip blushing with Nez Hasan, £600
Another treatment that adds no plumpness but certainly gives the impression of it, lip blushing is semi-permanent tattooing of the entire lip surface to add colour and definition. A good practitioner, Nez Hasan being one of them, will carefully select the best colour for you to amp up your natural lip shade, and meticulously fill the lips and lip lines to give you a youthfully defined mouth. You can read all the details of how it works, what you can achieve with it and why it’s one of Dr Sarah Tonks’s favourite treatments (she shared her before and after pictures with us), in our lip blushing feature.
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The LED lip healer
Currentbody Skin LED Lip Mask, £189.00
There appears to be a LED light panel for every body part these days, so why not one for lips? Boasting four wavelengths in the red and near-infrared spectrum (frequencies that have been shown to rev up cell function), there’s a dummy-like end that you stick in your mouth while you bathe your lips in light for three minutes a day. It will help calm lip skin and should overall improve skin condition in the area with long-term use, but let’s be honest, the claim of ‘94% immediately plumper, more volumized lips’ that I’ve seen for devices of this kind are far-fetched, however many actresses get spotted using it.
Buy nowThe plumping lip serum
Dr Dennis Gross Skincare DermInfusions Plump + Repair Lip Treatment, £25
Your best bet with plumping lip care is to find a balm or serum with different weights of hyaluronic acid (for attracting water to multiple skin layers) and peptides (for irritant-free collagen-boosting). This serum has all that plus a host of soothing agents such as ectoin and allantoin to look after ultra-delicate lip skin. It certainly juicifies lips instantly.
Buy nowThe scrub-and-plump volumiser
Tatcha the Kissu Lip Scrub, £29
Exfoliating your lips before you hydrate them yields extra plumpness, because, free of dead skin cells, your lips will absorb more moisture. But you don’t want to use your face scrub as it’ll tear delicate lip skin to shreds – hence the creation of lip scrubs.
A good one has gentle polishing ingredients – konjac powder and peach seed extract in this case – as well as nourishing oils (here’s it’s camellia oil), to baste freshly exfoliating lip skin in plumping, re-moisturising goodness. The result after a minute or so of massage with a tiny bit of product will be hyper-quenched lips that look slightly inflated. Follow with a any balm or lip treatment and things will look even better.
Buy nowCreate the illusion with make-up
Studio 10 Lip Perfecting Plumping Lip Liner, £25
A makeup artist’s trick for the illusion of fuller lips is to accentuate the cupid’s bow with a highlighter or a light pencil such as this, which cleverly has a rose/nude lip liner at the other end (the single shade combo claims to be universally wearable). Lining the outer edge of the top lip with the darker shade will give the illusion of poutiness, and then accentuating the cupid’s bow with the off-white end gives instant overall definition and optical plumping.
To ‘plump out’ the bottom lip, makeup artist Nathalie Eleni advises dabbing a little of your bronzer just under the middle of your bottom lip – instant contrast and plumpness, using a product already in your arsenal!
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