Professional Beauty | Face The Future

The lowdown: You have likely heard of lip blushing, but lip neutralisation is different. Specifically for melanin-rich skin tones and those with darker pigment in the lips, the treatment harmonises the tone of the lips with the rest of the face and adds definition.

The experience: The pink sanctuary that is the Tracie Giles Clinic is so welcoming. The staff all made me feel super comfortable and reassured me before going ahead with quite an intense treatment. My artist was Nina, who talked me through the neutralisation process. She explained that it is a lot about colour theory and using colour to cancel our certain tones. After examining my lips and taking lots of photos, Nina told me that while my skin tone is very warm, the colour of my lips is cool, with lots of blue and purple tones. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed the contrast before.

I told Nina I didn’t want anything too pink or red – I was looking for a dusty rose shade. She explained that this session would be more about neutralising the cool tones in my lips, so she would mostly be using orange. I would need a few more sessions over the next six months to get the final desired shade.

Nina outlined the shape of my lips and applied numbing cream. While the first pass with the needle was painful, each pass got less uncomfortable as more numbing cream was applied between.

The verdict: I was blown away by the results when I looked in the mirror. My lips were very swollen but I was assured that would go down in a few days. I loved the colour but was also looking forward to future sessions to get that shade I was looking for.

Business benefits: Offering neutralisation opens you up to a wider range of clients and fuller understanding of colour theory makes you a better SPMU artist all round.