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Rant & Rave: Lip Palettes

Share: Tell us what you love and hate about Lip Palettes!

my answer: I don’t think I’ve ever come across one that I really like. If you use lip brushes normally, I think that’s more the market it serves. I rarely use a lip brush to apply lipstick, so lipstick in a tube is more convenient for me.

21 Comments

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cassandra c Avatar

I detest lip palettes. I never buy them. Sometimes lip wells show up in combination palettes and I hate that because powder and goop stick and get everywhere. So I dont buy combination palettes either.

I do not use a lip brush, ever, to apply lipstick. Like you, I prefer tubes.

Jackie Avatar

Never owned one, don’t really want to. Lip color needs to be portable in a way that other colors don’t, so anything bigger than a tube is hard to carry around in your purse on a day-in-day-out basis. I also don’t usually use lip brushes, so lip palettes seem doubly inconvenient. That said, I’d love to see more lip collections — in tubes/mini-tubes. 🙂

Jarvis Avatar

I actually prefer lip palettes! They have to be solely lip palettes, though — the only combination palettes I’d even consider buying are the Make ones. The great thing about lip palettes is they take up so little space. My personal favorite one, Bite Beauty’s Luminous Lip Library, has nine shades, a balm, a primer, and some kind of topcoat I don’t use. It’s about three by five inches and sits at maybe a centimeter high, so it takes up much less space than a tube of lip balm, lip primer, and nine tubes of lipstick.

Not to mention lip palettes tend to be cheaper for the amount of product.

KaseyCannuck Avatar

I’ve acquired a couple of lip palettes over the years in makeup sets and I’ve only used a couple of the shades in them. I’m not an “everything looks great on me” kind of person. Trying to make the colours work by mixing and layering them is time consuming. I’ll take a single color tube any day!

Ryou Avatar

I don’t usually use lip brush, so I’m not big on them. However, I can imagine lip palettes being really useful (read: space-saving) for make-up artists, who’d have to use a lip brush on the clients anyway.

Tinose Avatar

For me personally, fingers and lipstick tubes are approximately the same in accuracy, so I don’t really have a problem with them convenience-wise. (Also known as how I put on OCC most days, whoops.) I suppose my problem comes from the same problem as all palettes – the only time I want more than one color at a time is if I’m using multiple colors. So if I’m doing an ombre look I’d appreciate it, but otherwise it just doesn’t do much for me.

xamyx Avatar

I actually prefer them, but I’m a fan of the lip brush, which I use with tubes, as well. I also like the idea of less product bringing down the overall price, since I can count on one hand the amount of lipsticks I’ve ever finished. However, the palette itself must be small enough for portability, and contain shades within the same “family”, so that I’m not stuck with something I’d never wear.

Ali Avatar

Great idea in theory, but almost useless in practice. Lipstick needs to be reapplied so hauling around a palette is usually not that practical. It is too bad. I love the idea of many different colours in smaller doses.

Sandra JT Avatar

Hate all lip palettes I bought in the past. Haven’t bought any in years. Can’t stand screwing around with lip brushes either. Tube lipstick or doe foot gloss applicators are more my thing. Not a fan of glosses with a brush on the wand, pot glosses or lip glosses in those disgusting squeeze tubes with the slanted tips that collect absolutely everything they shouldn’t & suck the grossness back into the tube when you stop squeezing EITHER *bleh*

xamyx Avatar

With an applicator that goes back into the tube, it’s actually more unhygienic than those with the slanted tips. If that’s truly a concern for you, a lip brush is your best bet, or those gloss sticks with the external brush (ie, Stila), which can be wiped clean. I actually use a clean brush for *everything*, lest my gloss tubes become a bacterial breeding ground. I simply swipe the brush on the doe-foot, or dab the product onto a clean palette & use my (clean) finger if I don’t have a brush available.

Jan Avatar

I have increasingly gotten into costume and dance parties and the price and small size of lip palette offerings works well in for those purposes. But for my own everyday looks, I have to remind myself to use them and they are very portable.

That being said, I’ve found the two palettes that I own don’t cause irritation or burning sensations on my lips – which actually means that a higher percentage of my palette lip sticks/glosses are actually usable.

Malia Avatar

I find lip palettes an absolute dream, and necessity, for working on others. I have started using them for myself also, but not the stage ones, only inglot, and theirs are amazingly high quality and in every shade so you can mix them. The quantity is also quite good, and reapplying every hour isn’t needed since their so pigmented.

Andrea Barreto Avatar

I am not against neither am I for them I have bought a couple of them but they are not my go to stuff I use them when I am doing my cousins makeup and stuff like that. I like them for convenience for that purpose but when I’m at work I don’t want to take a lip palette out to reapply if need be. So I stick to lipstick tubes.

DJ Avatar

Lip palettes are not my thing. But I do have two that I really love.

I have a Stila Convertible Color trio that is a dream. It’s perfect for travel and I get 3 blush options AND 3 lip options in one compact. I also have a lip color palette from The Body Shop. It’s very small and has 8 (or 10. Can’t recall) colors. Each shade is pretty small, but it’s great for travel because you get so many options! It also comes with a small lip brush and a mirror. So I don’t have to pack those extra.

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