As the temperature drops and a chill enters the air, skin naturally gets drier—and that’s especially true of the thin skin of the lips, which is prone to cracking and flaking. While the support of a good lip balm is essential, a truly parched, flaky pout may need the help of the best lip scrub. “A lip scrub is an exfoliating agent to soften and smooth the lips,” explains Dr. 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:
It’s not just seasonal weather changes that can cause your lips to feel dry and coarse. Unprotected sun exposure, dehydration, and the aging process can all hinder your skin’s ability to shed cells naturally, causing buildup that feels rough and impedes smooth lipstick application. 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 Dr. Nazanin Saedi, MD, board-certified dermatologist and clinical associate professor at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. Ahead, everything you need to know about using and choosing a lip scrub, featuring some handy tips from our experts.
In This Story:
Best Overall: Fresh Sugar Lip Scrub
- Why We Love It: This formula is a longtime favorite of Dr. 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 Daily Treatment: Tatcha The Kissu Lip Scrub
- Why We Love It: When your lips are chapped and cracked, it can be tempting to use a coarse scrub to buff away flaking skin—but that puts your pout at risk of irritation. Instead, you’ll want a formula that’s gentle enough to use daily, like this one from Tatcha. “It has fine enough granules that you won’t over-exfoliate, giving your lips a chance to heal and feel moisturized all in one,” says celebrity makeup artist Ashley Rebecca. In addition to sugar microcrystals, this scrub uses crushed peach seeds and konjac fibers to slough away dead skin in a base of ultra-nourishing camellia oil, leaving lips feeling polished and plump.
- Key Ingredients: Camellia oil, peach seed, konjac, sugar
- Size: 0.32 oz.
Best Drugstore: e.l.f. Lip Exfoliator
- Why We Love It: For the same price as a cup of coffee, you can experiment with lip exfoliation courtesy of this affordable formula from e.l.f., which comes in seven fun flavors (including popcorn and cotton candy) and is packaged in a convenient twist-up tube for mess-free application. The soft, balmy base is formulated with vitamin E, shea butter, and avocado oil to help soften lips as sugar helps slough away cracked and flakes.
- Key Ingredients: Sugar, vitamin E, jojoba oil, shea butter, avocado oil
- Size: 0.1 oz.
Best Gentle: iS Clinical Lip Polish
- Why We Love It: Dr. Sobel cites the iS Clinical Lip Polish as 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—coming together into a superfine, melt-onto-lips scrub.
- 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 Dr. Saedi. Dr. 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 Dr. 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 Dr. 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.
Best For Dry Lips: Grande Cosmetics GrandeBUFF Moisturizing Lip Scrub
- Why We Love It: According to Rebecca, this formula from Grande Cosmetics is ideal for anyone whose lips are extra dehydrated due to its ingredient list, which is stacked with must-have moisturizers. The nourishing base of the scrub features a rich blend of plant butters and oils like shea and argan, while it gets its exfoliating powers from sugar (a natural humectant) and dissolving jojoba beads. This indulgent scrub also has a delectable tropical flavor courtesy of the formula’s mango butter and coconut oil.
- Key Ingredients: Sugar, jojoba beads, shea butter, mango butter, argan oil
- Size: 0.53 oz.
Best Multitasking: Maed Reveal Exfoliating Lip Polish
- Why We Love It: This luxe lip polish first impressed us with its ingredient list, which features skin-loving actives like firming collagen peptides and barrier-supporting ceramides—but it was the product’s transforming texture that really hooked us. It starts off as an ultra-fine scrub, but as you massage it into your pout with a clean finger (be patient!), the formula melts into a silky, comforting balm, leaving lips velvety soft instantly after each use.
- Key Ingredients: Sugar, squalane, coffee seed oil, collagen peptides, ceramides
- Size: 0.27 oz.
Everything You Need to Know
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 Dr. Sobel. The removal of this dead skin creates a smooth, even canvas for your favorite lip color. Using an exfoliating 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, Dr. 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 cells. 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. Dr. Sobel points to natural ingredients like honey, jojoba oil, shea butter, and vitamin E as effective options; even hyaluronic acid, cocoa butter, turmeric or peppermint could be great inclusions.
If a lip scrub isn’t yielding the soft, velvety pout you’d hoped for, there’s a chance that your chapped lips aren’t solely a sign of dehydration. “The skin on your lips is delicate and can be easily irritated, just like the skin on your face,” says Dr. Saedi. In lips, irritation can manifest as dryness, often caused by ingredients like harsh dyes or fragrances. In this case, solely apply pure petrolatum or lanolin to your lips for a week to help them recover, then slowly—and one product at a time—”reincorporate lip balms, lip glosses, and lipsticks, paying close attention to see if any of your products are causing the irritation,” Dr. Saedi advises. To be safe, especially if you’re prone to sensitive skin, consider an option that’s fragrance-free, paraben-free, and cruelty-free.
How often should you use a lip scrub?
How often you apply a lip scrub depends on your skin type. Though we can all appreciate the instant gratification that comes courtesy of using a lip scrub, you don’t want to use them too frequently when trying to achieve softer lips. “Be careful not to overexfoliate, which can lead to irritation and contact dermatitis,” warns Dr. Evans, who advises using a scrub once a week. If your lips can tolerate it, you can add in a few more scrub sessions: “I recommend using a lip scrub two to three times a week at most,” says Sobel. Remember, irritation can cause your lips to dry out—easy does it. Dr. Saedi also recommends a soft touch when using a lip scrub. “It’s easy to overdo it by scrubbing too hard or too much, which can injure or damage the skin,” she says. “Apply gently to avoid causing harm.”
How do you apply lip scrubs?
“Less is more when it comes to lip scrubs, especially when the granules are coarse,” says Rebecca, noting that using them too frequently or too vigorously can cause irritation. Regardless of whether your product of choice is packaged in a jar or a tube, Rebecca recommends warming a small amount between clean fingers (a dab the size of a lentil or small pearl will suffice) before massaging it in circular motions across the entire lip area. This will help it spread more easily for a more thorough exfoliation. “Repeat this step until you feel you’ve gotten all the dead skin off, rinse your lip area, and follow up with a nourishing lip balm or mask,” advises Rebecca. Slicking on a favorite hydrating lip balm or lip mask after using a scrub will stave off dryness and keep your lips looking soft and plump.
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