The 8 Best Lip Masks for Your Softest Lips Ever
Our Top Picks:
Best Luxury: By Terry Baume de Rose Lip Care Best for Fine Lines: Furtuna Skin Olive Lip Butter Balm Best Overall: GRANDE Cosmetics GrandePOUT Plumping Lip Mask Best for Smoothing: goop beauty Nourishing Lip Repair Mask Best for Dry Lips: Patchology FlashPatch Lip Renewal 5 Minute Hydrogels Best for Chapped Lips: PCA SKIN Overnight Lip Mask Best Overnight: RMS Beauty Lipnights Overnight Lip Mask Best Glossy Finish: tarte Maracuja Juicy Lip Nourishing Melt Mask
Ingredients to Look for in Lip Masks
The right lip mask can do wonders for your lips, which is why it’s important to make sure you find a formula that contains ingredients that work. Most lip masks contain either hydrating or exfoliating ingredients to provide a unique benefit.
Hydrating lip masks: These feature a variety of ingredients that boost the lips’ natural moisture content. Commonly used ingredients include ceramides, fatty acids, shea butter, plant extracts, hyaluronic acid, jojoba oil, and squalane. Exfoliating lip masks: These work differently, gently buffing away dead skin cells for soft lips. These products usually contain sugar, gentle exfoliating acids, or fruit-based enzymes, like papaya or pineapple, to slough off dead skin cells up and away.
Best Lip Masks
Best Luxury: jane By Terry Baume de Rose Lip Care
$60.00
This ultra-luxe lip mask is the perfect antidote for perpetually chapped, dry lips. Featuring a concentrated rose blend wax and lip-friendly vitamins, this intense moisturizing and regenerative formula helps soothe and repair chapped lips without leaving the lips feeling sticky or tacky.
Key Ingredients: Rose blossom essential wax, shea butter, vitamin E, ceramides, hyaluronic acid
Skin Benefit(s): Regenerates chapped, dry lips, helps combat dryness, strengthens and protects the lips against environmental aggressors
Best for Fine Lines: Furtuna Skin Olive Lip Butter Balm
$45.00
Not all lip masks tackle troublesome fine lines as this smooth-as-butter one does. Packed with a bevvy of lip-hydrating and nourishing ingredients, this dermatologist-approved barrier booster instantly provides cushion and smoothness, so lips look and feel better. It also increases the lips' natural moisture content, helping conceal the appearance of fine lines and cracks.
Key Ingredients: Fermented olive oil, Splendore Anchusa® complex, extra virgin olive oil, olive squalane, sodium hyaluronate, kokum and shea butters, mimosa flower wax, ceramides
Skin Benefit(s): Locks in moisture and delivers lasting nourishment, soothes, smooths and strengthens the lip barrier, plumps the lips and leaves them feeling pillowy-soft, provides lasting barrier repair and protection against environmental aggressors
Best Overall: GRANDE Cosmetics GrandePOUT Plumping Lip Mask
$24.00
Like a tall drink of water for thirsty lips, this 2-in-1 lip mask adds moisture back to dry lips while plumping them, too. Perfect for reducing the appearance of wrinkles and lip lines, the non-sticky mask reinforces the lip's natural barrier while locking in moisture for 72 hours.
Key Ingredients: Volulip, DuraQuench, avocado oil, hyaluronic acid, lychee fruit extract, shea butter
Skin Benefit(s): Plumps the lips, locks in moisture, hydrates dry, flaky skin, aids with environmental effects on the lips, creates a barrier that coats the skin
Best for Smoothing: goop beauty Nourishing Lip Repair Mask
$30.00
This rich, buttery lip mask provides much-needed, long-lasting moisture for smoother, softer lips. Perfect to wear to sleep or whenever you need a little smoothing action, the lip treatment leaves the lip enveloped in a layer of hydration while protecting and enhancing the lip barrier too.
Key Ingredients: Biomimetic ceramides, cold-pressed fig oil, acai fruit sterol
Skin Benefit(s): Hydrates dry lips, smoothes and softens the lips, provides a multisensory experience, protects against environmental stressors, and enhances the lips’ barrier function
Best for Dry Lips: Patchology FlashPatch Lip Renewal 5 Minute Hydrogels
$17.00
This unique lip mask format renews and replenishes dry, cracked lips in mere minutes. Perfect for those times when instant comfort is a necessity, just slip on one of the hydrogel masks and let it go to work to deliver a blend of ingredients that provides hydration and anti-aging benefits.
Key Ingredients: Niacinamide, peptides, green tea extract
Skin Benefit(s): Improves lip texture, evens out tone, reduces the look of fine lines and vertical lip lines, stimulates collagen production, restores lip volume, protects the lips
Best for Chapped Lips: PCA SKIN Overnight Lip Mask
$50.00
Chapped, cracked, peeling lips don’t stand a chance against this leave-on lip treatment. Designed to provide an intense surge of hydration to moisturize and nourish the lips, it also helps to fight some of the common signs of aging around the mouth, mitigating the look of deeply etched lip lines and soothing that chapped, tight, flaky feeling.
Key Ingredients: Squalane, shea butter, vitamin E, alfalfa extract
Skin Benefit(s): Hydrates, nourishes, soothes, repairs, and protects the lips
Related Article: The Best PCA Skin Products, Tested and Approved by Our Beauty Editor
Best Overnight: RMS Beauty Lipnights Overnight Lip Mask
$29.00
From legendary makeup artist Rose-Marie Swift comes this does-it-all gloss that treats the lips while you sleep. Packed with lip-soothing and smoothing butters, peptides, and vitamins, this non-sticky, super nourishing formula deeply hydrates the lips, while subtly volumizing them, so come morning, your lips are softer, smoother, and healthier-looking.
Key Ingredients: Kakadu plum seed oil, peptides, pomegranate extract
Skin Benefit(s): Provides 24-hour hydration and repair, volumizes while adding shine
Related Article: An Honest RMS Beauty Review, Tested and Approved By Our Esthetician
Best Glossy Finish: tarte Maracuja Juicy Lip Nourishing Melt Mask
$27.00
Not all lip masks double as an overnight treatment, and some act more like a wear-whenever lip restorer that helps up the ante in the hydration department. Featuring a shiny, glossy finish, this day or night lip product melts into the lips, leaving them well hydrated and with the most beautiful sheen
Key Ingredients: Superfruit complex, maracuja oil, mango butter, shea butter, sodium hyaluronate, Caramel Kiss Oil complex
Skin Benefit(s): Smoothes, nourishes, conditions, and hydrates the lips, leaving them looking and feeling softer
How to Choose the Right Lip Mask
Before you put just anything on your lips, rule number one is to determine whether your lips require moisture or exfoliation. If they are dry and feel a little deflated or wrinkly, a hydrating lip mask is probably the right choice, whereas an exfoliating one is more in need when the lips are flaky, chapped, and dry. From there, choose a lip mask that contains vitamins, nutrients, and moisturizing agents—you can also look for lip masks that offer intense hydration or a plumping or anti-aging effect as a bonus.
One thing to avoid is lip masks with fragrances, alcohol, or harsh chemicals, as these ingredients can irritate and dry out the lips. If your lips are naturally sensitive, stick to lip masks with gentle, soothing ingredients like aloe vera, honey, and chamomile, as well as those that are hypoallergenic and dermatologist-tested.
FAQs
How often should you use a lip mask?
There’s no such thing as overusing or underusing a lip mask that hydrates and helps restore the lips to their healthy condition. Most hydrating lip masks are designed to be used nightly, whereas exfoliating ones are meant to be used just a few times per week.
What are the benefits of lip masks?
Different lip masks offer different benefits, but for the most part, they hydrate, nourish, soften dry, chapped lips, and lock in moisture for the long term. Some can also plump, whisk away flaky skin, and even act as a primer for longer-lasting lipstick and such.
What are the differences between a lip mask and a lip balm?
Lip masks tend to contain more powerful ingredients, making them more effective. Typically, lip masks contain moisturizing ingredients like those in face creams, so you’re likely to find emollients, occlusives, and antioxidants in the formulas, which provide super-hydrating powers. Wax-type balms provide a stronger barrier on the lips to seal in moisture (they're usually not long-lasting), whereas a lip mask is known to last longer for a more intense skin-softening and hydrating effect. Plus, lip masks are richer and thicker, helping repair the skin on the lips.
The Bottom Line
The skin on the lips is among the thinnest on the body, which is why the lips need gentle love and care. And just like the skin elsewhere on the body, the lips can also become dry, wrinkled, thin, and fragile, which is where a good lip mask comes into the mix. Whether you wear one every night to sleep or just swipe it on when your lips need a little extra love, having a good lip mask on hand is as essential as wearing sunscreen every single day—don’t go without one!
Elise Minton Tabin is an award-winning beauty journalist, editor, and beauty expert with more than 16 years of experience. She previously held the title of Executive Beauty Editor at NewBeauty magazine, where she reported on beauty, plastic surgery, anti-aging, health and wellness. She was also instrumental in the launch of the beauty supplement brand Hush & Hush. A self-professed beauty junkie and retinol and sunscreen pusher, Elise knows what’s new, what works and who’s the best to go for every procedure under the sun. Follow Elise on Facebook, Instagram, and on her beauty blog, elisetabin.com
