Welcome to the Age of the No-Liner Lip Liner

Beauty is full of contradictions. No-makeup-makeup, the naked manicure—the trends of yore are meant to look like you’re not wearing anything at all (even though you most definitely are). The allure of the no-liner lip liner is its undetectability.

These are the pencils I reach for when I want to subtly amplify my lips’ fullness—no needles required—and achieve a result so natural, some might suspect I’ve opted for filler. The true test is simple: After applying any pencil in my collection, do my lips merely look a bit plumper, or is the liner itself obvious? (This nuance is especially important for me, as I have a double lip line where my natural lip pigment doesn’t extend all the way to the border.) I consider myself something of an authority here, having spent years perfecting my lineup of natural-looking lip liners.

While playful experimentation is certainly on the rise, no-liner lip liners remain essential in frequent rotation as the perfect complement to a bold, smoky eye or a pop of blue shadow when you want the lips to stay understated. Trust me: as someone who’s never subscribed to the clean girl aesthetic, I know their value firsthand.

Vogue’s Favorite Natural-Looking Lip Liners

Image may contain: Cosmetics, and Lipstick

The rise of the subtle lip liner is certainly a departure from the more contrasting liner looks of the early aughts and 2010s—which can admittedly be intimidating for everyday wear. The 2020s, however, has found resonance with makeup as a form subtle enhancements. Think: natural skin-tone shades for contoured over contrasted pouts, and even blurred finishes; as evidenced by one of my favorite 2025 debuts from Merit.

“Lip liner felt like a category ripe for our particular brand of disruption–a classic product with pain points that tend to make it intimidating for the average consumer,” Merit’s chief marketing officer Aila Morin tells Vogue. The idea of their new lip liner is that its incredibly easy to use, designed with versatility in mind. “Our sheer liner is truly impossible to mess up, no matter how much you feel you don’t know how to do makeup. It’s more forgiving and easier to play with–you can outline, overline, or fill in lips entirely–there’s no wrong way to use it.”

Since, two of my favorite makeup artists—Mary Philips and Katie Jane Hughes—have launched their own options that became instant makeup bag staples. Phillips’s peptide-packed wooden pencil and Hughes’s retractable chubby liner require no professional artist’s touch to master—both aiming to enhance the natural lip shape. Other options by Rhode, Refy, and Dior which instead of the sheer color provided by Merit—which celebrity makeup artist Joel Vasquez describes as a translucent finish by softly outlining the lips while enhancing your natural lip color—lean into the contoured finish; which, per Vasquez, work “to add depth and shape, emulating natural shadows to achieve fuller, more defined lips without noticeable lines.”