Winter can leave your lips feeling dry, tight and cracked, making everyday lip care more important than ever. The right lip balm can help protect your lips and keep them feeling soft and comfortable. Discover why lips become chapped in winter, which ingredients actually help, and what to avoid. With a few simple changes, you can keep your lips moisturised throughout the colder months.
Every year it happens in the same order. The first cold mornings arrive, the heater or radiator goes on, and within a week the corners of your mouth feel tight, your lipstick starts catching on little flakes, and you find yourself reaching for the minty balm in your bag every twenty minutes. The odd thing is that the balm often seems to make things worse. There is a reason for that, and once you know how lips are built and what is actually in the tube, winter lip care becomes much simpler and a lot cheaper.
Why lips give up first
The skin of your lips is not like the skin on your cheeks. According to Cleveland Clinic, lip skin is thinner and more sensitive than skin elsewhere on the body and has no oil glands of its own, so it has very little built-in defence against drying out. A Live Science explainer adds that lips also lack the hair follicles and sweat glands found on the rest of the face, and that the protective layers of facial skin can be several times thicker than those on the lips.
Winter attacks that thin barrier from two directions. Cold outdoor air holds less moisture, and indoor heating dries the air further, so your lips lose water all day whether you are out or in. Add a blocked nose that has you breathing through your mouth at night, and you have the perfect set-up for cracking and peeling by morning.
The licking trap
Licking dry lips feels like it should help, because for a second they feel soft and wet. The same Live Science piece explains why it backfires: saliva contains digestive enzymes, and as it evaporates it strips away what little oily protection the lips have, leaving them drier than before. The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) makes the same point, and suggests a practical swap: every time you feel the urge to lick, put on a non-irritating balm instead. Biting or picking at loose flakes belongs in the same category, because it keeps reopening skin that is trying to heal.
One small habit the AAD also flags is easy to miss: holding metal objects such as paper clips, hairpins or jewellery between your lips. If you pin your hair up with a grip in your mouth every morning, that is worth breaking too.
Read the label: what to avoid while lips are cracked
This is where most of us go wrong. Many of the best-selling lip balms are sold on a sensation, whether that is a cool tingle, a sweet flavour or a pleasant scent. The AAD’s rule is blunt: if a product burns, stings or tingles, it is irritating your lips, and you should stop using it. Its list of ingredients to avoid while your lips are chapped includes:
- Camphor, menthol, eucalyptus and phenol, the ingredients behind that “medicated” cooling feeling
- Flavourings such as cinnamon, citrus, mint and peppermint, plus added fragrance
- Lanolin, propyl gallate and salicylic acid
- The chemical sunscreen filters octinoxate and oxybenzone
Cleveland Clinic’s list overlaps closely and adds waxes, which can sit on top of the lips without doing much to hold moisture in. None of this means a peppermint balm is dangerous. It means that when your lips are already cracked, the sting you feel is irritation rather than “the product working”.
What actually helps
The ingredients both the AAD and Cleveland Clinic point towards are unglamorous and widely available: white petroleum jelly (petrolatum), mineral oil, shea butter, dimethicone, ceramides, hemp seed oil and castor seed oil. For very dry, cracked lips, the AAD recommends a thick ointment such as plain white petroleum jelly, because ointments hold moisture in for longer than waxes or oils. The most effective option in most pharmacies is often also the cheapest, a basic tub of petroleum jelly, and it does not need to be flavoured, tinted or branded to work.
When you are shopping, look for the words “fragrance-free” and “hypoallergenic” on the pack, then check the ingredient list yourself, since “unscented” and flavour-free are not always the same thing.
An honest complication: castor oil and lanolin
Here is where the advice gets less tidy. Castor seed oil appears on the AAD’s “helps heal” list and on Cleveland Clinic’s “look for” list. Yet DermNet, the dermatology reference run by New Zealand dermatologists, describes ricinoleic acid, which comes from castor oil, as the most common current cause of allergic reactions to lip cosmetics. Lanolin is similar: a classic, rich emollient that both the AAD and Cleveland Clinic suggest avoiding on chapped lips, and which DermNet also lists as a known allergen.
These positions are not really in conflict. Most people tolerate castor oil perfectly well, which is why it is so common in lip products. But if your lips stay red, scaly and itchy no matter how diligently you moisturise, the product itself may be the problem. DermNet’s list of other possible triggers is long, covering fragrances and flavours (including vanilla and cinnamaldehyde), certain red and yellow dyes, propolis and beeswax-related substances, vitamin E, the sunscreen filter benzophenone-3 and even nickel in metal lipstick cases. It also notes that lip plumpers containing cinnamon or cayenne can cause a reaction, which is worth knowing before party season.
The practical takeaway: if a “good” balm is not working after a couple of weeks, try a plain petroleum jelly with no other ingredients for a while, and set aside your lipsticks and glosses too. If things calm down, you have a clue.
Sun protection still matters in December
It is easy to drop SPF once the weather turns grey, but the AAD advises a non-irritating lip balm with SPF 30 or higher before going outdoors, reapplied every two hours while you are outside, even in winter. It specifically recommends mineral filters, zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, rather than the chemical filters on its avoid list, and notes that sun can burn already chapped lips and may trigger cold sores. This matters most on bright winter days in the hills, on a ski trip or on a long outdoor wedding afternoon, when you are out in strong light for hours.
A simple winter lip routine
Pulling the advice from all three medical sources together, a routine that costs very little looks like this:
- Morning: apply a fragrance-free balm as soon as you wake up. If you are heading out in daylight, make it one with SPF 30 or above and zinc oxide or titanium dioxide.
- Through the day: keep one balm in your bag, one at your desk and one by the bed, as Cleveland Clinic suggests, and reapply after eating or drinking.
- Outdoors: top up the SPF balm roughly every two hours.
- Night: a generous layer of white petroleum jelly before bed. If your room is heated, a humidifier helps, especially if you tend to sleep with your mouth open.
- All day: drink enough water and replace every lip-lick with a dab of balm.
Wearing lipstick on winter lips
You do not have to give up colour for the season, but it helps to treat lipstick as something that sits on top of a healthy base. Apply your balm well before your make-up so it has time to sink in, then blot off the excess with a tissue before lining and filling. Resist the urge to scrub flakes off with a toothbrush or a gritty scrub right before going out; on chapped lips that counts as picking, and the AAD’s advice is to let the skin heal rather than force it.
Look at your colour products with the same eye you use for balm. A scented or flavoured gloss, a tingling plumper or a lipstick you only started using this month could be part of the story, given DermNet’s list of fragrance, flavour and dye triggers. If your lips are already sore, a tinted balm without fragrance is a gentler bridge until they recover.
How long should it take?
Cleveland Clinic says most chapped lips improve within a few days to a week with regular care, while severe cases can take two to three weeks. The AAD gives the same two-to-three-week window and advises seeing a board-certified dermatologist if your lips have not healed by then, since persistent dryness and scaling can have other causes, including an allergy to a product, an infection or, occasionally, something more serious that needs a proper look. Cleveland Clinic also lists certain medicines, including retinoids, among the things that can dry the lips, so it is worth mentioning anything new you have started. Frequent bleeding or lips that keep getting worse are also a reason to get checked rather than buying yet another balm.
For most of us, though, winter lips do not need an elaborate product. They need fewer tingles, a plain ointment, sunscreen on bright days and the discipline to stop licking. It is one of the rare corners of beauty where the cheapest tub on the shelf is often the right answer.
Sources: American Academy of Dermatology – How to heal dry, chapped lips; Cleveland Clinic – Chapped Lips; DermNet – Contact reactions to lipsticks and other lip care products; Live Science – Why do lips get so chapped in winter?
