• Invisalign from a beauty perspective

    Only a beauty addict could come up with such an angle!  I’ve been wearing invisalign aligners for a month now and, accordingly,  I’ve had to adjust a few things beauty-wise.

    Here, I’m not going to talk about the inconvenience of having to take off your aligners every single time you want to eat or drink anything (except for water), nor the lovely lisp you have when you try to speak whilst wearing them. Those will all be addressed in a dedicated article about the dental procedure itself. However, it isn’t the focus of this post.

    You’ve guessed it, lips are going to be the spotlight of this piece. (Indeed, I haven’t found any weird or imaginative beauty consequences of wearing Invisalign. Yet.)

    Lip care

    The first change I noticed was an immediate dryness of the lips which aligners tend to rub a lot. Also, wearing them leaves you with a bit of a gaping mouth (charming…), hence the increased dryness. So I was left with extremely chapped lips that began to peel. A two-step process was necessary to bring my lips back to normal: exfoliation and hydration.

    Exfoliation alone wasn’t enough to begin with. First, I had to pick off the hanging dry bits of skin with a tweezer. It seems gross but it was essential to begin to repair the lips. I then alternated between scrubbing my lips with a toothbrush and gently exfoliating them with a damp towel. Both methods work fine.

    The second step is to nourish the lips. I applied my usual restorative lip balms: Nuxe rêve de miel lip balm and the Hurraw stick balm (I’ve reviewed them here).

    With this beauty regime, I’m pleased to say that everything is now back in order. I just have to remember to exfoliate more regularly.

    Makeup

    Now for the fun part! I can’t use lipstick for the next 6 months unless I want to systematically find it on my aligners. Woohoo!

    It’s the creamy textures that are to blame. They move around too easily. I know that this can also happen to anyone. However, with Invisalign, the product gets stuck in the grooves of the aligners. If you don’t spot it, you quickly become this plastic-teeth, lipstick-eating monster.

    The solution here is to use lip stains or tinted balms (if they are not too creamy/oily). With them you get the benefit of color without the added texture. I like to use the YSL vinyl cream (I only pat a small amount on my lips) and, my new purchase, the Ere Perez beetroot cheek & lip tint. The Clinique chubby sticks are also fine if you don’t apply too much of them.

    As for lip liners, you can use them but only as they are intended for, to shape the lips, and not for an all-over application.

    I’ll be back in a few months to properly review Invisalign, hopefully with straighter teeth and a great before & after picture!

     

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