How you use lip tint comes down to personal preference. It should essentially act as a concentrated colour that you can use either as a blended gradient or as layers of bright colour. It’s designed to ‘stain’ your lips to create a natural pop of colour that stays with you throughout the day. First, make sure you don’t have dry patches on your lips – gently exfoliate with a damp face towel to scrub away dry spots so the colour doesn’t cling to dried spots. 

Then, make sure your lips are nicely hydrated – with a plain lip balm or even a serum/moisturizer. Avoid using an oily base for your lips as this can prevent the lip tint from absorbing well into your skin for an all-day colour. A plumping product is great to help create a smooth canvas and avoid lines forming in your tint. 

Natural Look: apply a quick dab to hydrated lips. Gently blend and blend carefully until colour is melded with your natural lip colour for a light ‘tone up’ effect. After applying, remember to leave colour to set – don't rub lips together, mash or touch until the colour is dry, otherwise the tint will become patchy. The outer layer of tint will slowly wear away, but it will leave a natural colouring that will last all day. 

Deep Colour: for a pop of colour, apply carefully and evenly to hydrated lips. Once your first layer is prepped, leave colour to set for up to 2 minutes. When we wear colour, the outer edges of our lip tends to stay, whereas the inner lip gets worn by the moisture of our mouth – so once the first layer sets, create a second layer over the inner lining of your lips. Leave to set for 2 minutes. You can apply a third or fourth layer depending on how vibrant you want your look. 

Shading: pick two colours to blend together, first by applying a light overall layer from the inside to the edges of your lips. Then apply a second, darker colour to the inner lining of your lips and gently blur outwards into the first colour. This creates a gradience for more dramatic and fun looks. 

In finishing your look, you can apply a light lip oil or balm over the top to help moisturize and add a natural shine. Lip tints tend to be drying, so this can help bring back a luscious shine to your lips. You can alternatively finish with a light setting powder on the outer lips to prevent it sliding off. 

Oils will break down your tint quickly and lose colour – so it’s important to avoid oily foods and overdoing it on your lip oil. If you are going to eat a tasty oily lunch, try to avoid lip contact and eat carefully.  

Also avoid mashing your lip together as this brushing can create patches in your lip oil and will wear down colour faster (which can feel weird as this is the exact mechanism we normally use for lipsticks and balms to even it out).  

What do we want in a perfect lip tint? Colour is a must – that's the purpose of this all, after all. It should have a strong and bold colour that stays well and matches the original swatch. Secondly, longevity. A lip tint should last at least 6-8 hours – with a noticeable colour effect, otherwise it’s not going to be much better than a lipstick or coloured lip oil, which slides off with general contact. And finally, a great finish – we want to be looking our best and the lip tint should have a designated finish; whether that’s airy (a light powdery tint that settles gently) or glossy (a beautiful shine) or matte (sets without a reflective, oily surface). 

We’ve put some of the best and brightest in K-Beauty to the test! From Etude House, to Peripera, to Colorgram, Rom&nd and Innisfree – who has the best lip tint? Let’s find out! 

Peripera is a K-Beauty make-up great. They have some of the largest varieties of shades and different lip tint lines – making them a go-to (especially for rarer and more fun colours). We tested two out of their line-up: the Ink Airy Velvet and their Ink Mood Matte Tint. We chose two popular colours, Heavenly Peach (24) and Smoky Coral (08). 

We put all our colours through a variety of tests – durability, drink test, colour testing and staining. As mentioned, a good lip tint should be durable and last you a long time. The wear time for both colours was around 6 hours; after which the colours would wear away whilst eating and drinking normally. They both are powder and chunky, making them dry quicker but also harder to apply. They scored low in a drink test (comes off easily when you sip a beverage) and had a fairly low stain. The Ink Airy Velvet had a superior stain, which lasts 2 more hours than the Mood Matte Tint (which barely left a stain at all).

[Also very important note that Heavenly Peach has a strong peach scent - making it the best and strongest smelling of all tested tints - which is worth a bonus point].

Overall, we gave them a score of 7/10. Great colours, but there were some problems and durability was low. Great for a night out – less great for long-term day wear. 

Rom&nd is a classic K-Beauty brand, with bold, long-lasting colours. Here, we used one of their brightest reds – Joyful, from their Zero Velvet Tint range. Similar to Peripera, it has a really chunky and dry texture, goes on smooth for a deep application. Once it’s in place it has a dark stain (which definitely gets on anything it touches, so be careful). It comes off quite easily when you drink and despite the depth of colour, it only lasted about 6 hours.  

It had a weaker stain than the Peripera, likely due to its darker colour. However, great again for a night out where you want to look bold and the colour was one of the brightest that we tested. We gave it an overall score of 6/10.

Innisfree is known for their natural, traditional skincare and until this moment, I didn’t really know they did lip tints. But they are a K-Beauty giant and deserve our respect and hence, we bought the Airy Matte Tint to test it out (True Orange). We were noticing a growing trend that matte lips tended to come off easier than the glossy tints (likely due to the fact that they were thicker and didn’t penetrate as well). This orange tint is deeply orange, delightful and actually looks really great, melding naturally with your look. It held out for 5 hours, but vanished quickly with drinking. It had a good amber stain and was really not a bad lip tint. 

Colour gave it great points and it was really easy to blend and apply – for a score of 7/10. 

CLIO is a mainstay of K-Beauty; most well known for their flawless and light cushions. This lip tint is from their Dewy Syrup Range 01 – Hannam in Red. It was a rather watery and uneven application – which tanked it’s score. The colour was vibrant – like a mixture of berries, but patchy and hard to get even. It does hold a great stain and lasted 8 hours – so if you can get a hold of it’s application; it does make for a good day-wear lip tint. Also it was less likely to stain nearby objects and clothing, cementing it as a good day-wear option. 

Overall score was 6/10 - very hard to apply well. Lovely colour; but was a berry colour in a pink tube named ‘Hannam in Red’ so we were a bit confused.

Holika Holika was our underdog in the competition, one of our personal favourites that we decided to put amongst the big dogs. But, unfortunately our tested colour came last in the running for Lip Tint status. The chosen colour, Heart Crush Glow Tint #Bae had a lovely, glossy colour – but was genuinely not really a tint. It worked really well as a lip gloss; with a soft, sweet scent and warm, bronze colour. But it came off immediately, with only 2 hour wear and a non-visible stain.  

Giving them a final score of 4/10 in the competition. 

Colorgram is a newer player on the make-up scene in K-Beauty, but has risen rapidly through their use of fun products, colours and formulas. We chose the Mochi Pink colour, very very specifically for the cute bear character that was shown in advertising. Cue to our betrayal, when the tube came without the cute bear character. 

However, we persevered. We chose, on purpose, bright colours to help show-case the colours of these brands – but the Mochi Pink was almost a non-colour, providing simply a light tone-up effect when applied (not much noticeable difference to my natural lip colour). However, the stain was tied for strongest in the competition – meaning brighter colours will hold their own, with an easy and liquid application and a glossy finish. 

With a stronger tint on hand – this would be a really strong contender for a long-lasting (gave us 8 hours) glossy tint. If it had the cute bear, this would probably be our winner – but nice try, Colorgram. Final score was 8/10. 

Etude House was the deepest, strongest and easiest application for lip tint. We tested two of their lines; the Dear Darling Water Gel Tint and their Fixing Tint Matte. Both had the strongest and most vibrant colours of the entire testing period, as well as the strongest stains. Their Dear Darling Water Gel Tint was so vibrant and stained so well, it was still stuck on 24 hours later. In fact, I couldn’t get it off, even with cleansing (which is both good and bad) - but if you need a tint that has your absolute back; Etude House has the formulas. Their Fixing Matte tint provided a deep solid colour and was a smooth consistency, for a neat application and flawless wear (lasted 8 hours of wear). 

There’s a reason Etude House specializes in make-up and related skincare. There’s a reason their Dear Darling series is famous and if you are looking for a longwear tint that will stay vibrant and in place for HOURS, this is the perfect addition. The only point that they lost was that we tested their ‘Kumquat’ shade – which is a bright orange in the bottle; but develops into a deep, hot-pink on your lips. Although it was a flattering and nice colour; it was so far removed from the original colour, we had to knock off a point – so be aware of potential color difference from advertisement.

This professional, high-quality lip tint won out our categories for colour, application, drink test, longevity and lip stain - for a top score of 9/10.

Lip tints are a beautiful, long-lasting option to provide a deep colour for your day/night. It's important to firstly select a great quality lip tint (we recommend Etude House or Colorgram from our tests) and ensure you apply it properly. Then, enjoy a long-day wear of bright colours that will have you feeling your cutest without fade.

Shop all our favourite K-Beauty Lip Tints, available on Arktastic. We source only from Seoul, Korea to ensure you authentic Korean cosmetics with every shop!

Looking for more make-up advice? Check out our blog on finding your perfect lip tint colour. Or if you are after sunscreen tips before summer hits, check out how to stop sunscreen pilling:

How to Choose Your Lip Colour 

How to Stop Pilling (Sunscreen + Make-up) 

How to Use Lip Tint? 
It’s best to apply lip tint carefully over dry, but exfoliated and hydrated lips. Apply a base coat, all over and leave to dry (be careful not to touch, smudge or mash lips together) for 5 minutes. After this time, apply a secondary coat, being sure to coat inner area of lips for long-lasting protection. Then leave to set and try to avoid eating and drinking for the first hour for the stain to set. 

Why Are Lip Tints So Good? 
Where a lipstick or lip oil requires repeat application, a good lip tint will provide a light stain to your lips – giving you hours and hours of wear, with bright and vibrant color. If you are expecting a busy day or night out, a lip tint is superior over a lipstick as you can wear it without worry about smudging or being lost on your adventures. You can layer, blend colours or even apply very lightly for a natural, soft color. 

How to Pick the Best Lip Tint? 
Always be sure to test the lip tint colour first, as this can be different from the advertised color (once it dries). It’s important to pick a high-quality tint from a make-up brand, as these are best designed to blend with your look and last the longest. Our testing of a variety of factors dubbed the best lip tints to be from Etude House and Colorgram due to both colours, application and long-lasting (each at least 8 hours).