It’s an undeniable beauty basic – never leave your home without applying lip balm. However, while you may have heard this maxim hundreds of times in your life, it does nothing to explain why you should make lip balm a can’t-miss part of your daily beauty routine.

It may seem like a throwaway product, but lip balm actually has tons of benefits for your lips and can even help complete your beauty look.

  1. Speeds Up Healing

If you’ve already got chapped lips, you might be wondering if there’s any point in applying lip balm before they heal. The answer? Yes, there is. The active ingredients in lip balms such as Eucerin Acute Lip Balms not only help hydrate your lips but also help them heal faster. This means just a little lip balm is the solution you need to get rid of the pain of chapped lips as quickly as possible.

  1. Keeps Your Pout Plump 

Dryness doesn’t just cause your lips to flake; it also makes them look thinner. If you’re hoping for that movie star-perfect pout, this is the last thing that you want. Lip balms help moisturize your lips, getting rid of that dried-out appearance. Not only that, but they also help your lips look – and feel! – softer and suppler, giving you the perfect, plump base as you apply your runway-ready makeup!

  1. Keeps Chapped Lips Away

Here’s a fun fact: the skin on your lips is thinner than the rest of the skin on your face. This means they get damaged more efficiently, resulting in painful, chapped lips. Not only does chapping look unattractive if you let it go untreated for too long, but your lips can also start flaking and even bleeding! A thin application of lip balm, especially one that contains SPF to protect you from the sun, can help prevent this from happening, ensuring that your lips always look as good as you feel.

  1. Completes Your Makeup Look

No makeup look is complete without the perfect lips, whether they’re painted a bright red or simply have a hint of colour and shimmer. Lip balm can help with this – if you don’t need to apply lipstick, lip gloss can provide a hint of colour without being too aggressive a shade.

If you plan on wearing lipstick, applying a layer of lip gloss first will ensure that your lipstick goes on smoothly, without any bumps that can affect the final look. Keep in mind that if you’re wearing matte lipstick, you should first wait for the gloss to dry before you apply the shade of your choice – this will give you the benefits of lip balm without affecting your look lipstick.

Of course, it’s not just your lips that can benefit from lip balm – you can use it to keep the area around your nose from getting dry in winter, for example, and you can also use it to heal cracked fingertips. No matter what else you use it for, however, one thing’s for sure – lip balm should be as essential to your preparation for the day as brushing your hair and for a good reason!