Clarins Water Lip Stain Review

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Today, let’s talk about lips.

Now, when liquid lipstick first came out, they were all the rage. I literally ran out and purchased 10 in one go cause I was so committed to the liquid-lip game. Fast forward a few years and our love for liquid lips has faded. Initially, liquid lips offered the hope of a super long-wearing lipstick that would budge. But, the hope fell flat once we realized that sure, liquid lips may last longer – but when you eat or drink, they’ll still remove, and when they wear off during the day they make your lips look extremely patchy. Oh – and reapplying a liquid lip? Usually, you have to start all over again! How annoying. So unless you’re bringing makeup remover wipes wherever you go, you’re probably like me and taking a little step back from liquid lips.

When Clarins sent out their lip water stains, I was immediately curious to try them out. I remember loving lip stains during high-school, and I thought maybe these would be the long-wearing lip that we all hoped liquid lipsticks would be.

Clarins Lip Water Stain Review

When you apply these lip stains, you’ll want to go in with a light hand to carefully apply the stain within the lip-line (it’s very easy to accidentally get some outside of your lip-line and then have a stained chin!), and layer the lip stain up to get to full opacity. The colours themselves only take about 2 layers to become bright and bold tones. Let the stain then dry on your mouth to keep the full bright colour – this takes about 30 seconds. *Note: if you want a more subtle and soft look, then blot lips before they are fully dry, or just apply 1 thin layer

To hydrate your lips and get a glossy finish, apply the hydrating lip-topper. The lip-topper I have is in “Honey”, a soft and subtle yellow-gold-tone which applies clear on your lips.

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The Shades:

Rose Water: a bright peppy hot pink

Orange Water: a bright orange-soda orange

Red Water: a pretty pinky-red with some orange tones in it.

Violet Water: a berry magenta.

Honey (hydrating lip topper): yellow-gold that turns clear on lips

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Once the stains dry down, it feels like you have absolutely nothing on your lips. This stain is extremely long-wearing but after about 6 hours (depending on how much you eat and drink during that time) you’ll notice it begins to fade. Thankfully it doesn’t fade in a flakey or patchy fashion, instead it just overall begins to fade away.

With the oil-topper, I initially thought this product may be like the Lipsense products that are so popular right now. And, if you follow me on Instagram then you likely know that I really dislike Lipsense products. They burned my lips, made them extremely chapped, and the intense smell of chemicals made me really uneasy about Lipsense lipsticks overall. Thankfully, these stains aren’t like that at all. They do not burn, instead, they feel very cooling when applied, they actually feel quite hydrating initially, and they smell like sugary syrup.  (Also, be sure you follow me on Instagram – I recently live swatched these lip shades and I test makeup out often on there!)