Lip Liners, Reimagined: The Trend Shaping 2025

Lip liners are back and have something in common. Here’s what this emerging trend can teach us about NPD. 

The new generation of lip liners

Beauty trends come and go, often inspiring similar products in rapid succession. Thanks to turnkey suppliers, the beauty industry experiences a fast-fashion effect, with similar innovations reimagined in quick succession. From the tail end of 2024 to the spring of 2025, a new wave of lip liners emerged from brands like Refy, Rhode, and Merit. These modern lip pencils are chubbier, offering a soft-touch, blurred effect designed to create a smudged, lived-in look without the need for blending. The expansive shade ranges of foundation have influenced lip liners as well, leading to a more inclusive selection of tones with sheer, diffused pigment. Gone are the days of drying wood pencils, creating harsh unnatural lines along the border of lips. 

Products Pictured: Refy Lip Blur, Rhode Lip Shape, Merit Signature Lip Liner

Sources: Rhode, Merit, Refy 

Where did this trend come from?

The inspiration for these chunky, lightly pigmented lip pencils can be traced back to K-Beauty, which has long championed the blurred, popsicle-stained pout. If you look closely, you’ll notice the shape and experience mirror another makeup bag staple — eyeshadow pencils. Remember the iconic Laura Mercier Caviar Sticks? Hold a pencil next to Rhode’s Lip Contour and you’ll see double - discovering how this format that has been cleverly repurposed for lips. 

Let’s bring it back to NPD

New Product Development (NPD) thrives on this type of cross-category innovation. A product’s shape and function, originally designed for one area of the face, can often be adapted to enhance another. Taking inspiration from existing forms and adapting them for new categories breathes fresh life into classic products. In makeup, we see this in chunky cream blush sticks that double as lip colors, or the reverse – doe-foot applicators typically reserved for lip gloss being used to apply liquid blush for a sweeping wash of color.

This flexibility extends to skincare as well. Consider packaging, where cooling metal-tipped applicators commonly found on eye creams to glide smoothly across lids, are repurposed as the perfect applicator for lip balm. Their flat, fingertip-shaped design allows for precise application, offering both a sensory and functional benefit. Meanwhile, hybrid formulations of makeup infused with skincare ingredients have become the new standard - consumers increasingly expect makeup to nourish skin while adorning it. This “skinification” of makeup will continue to grow, paving the way for an expansive new terrain of products to simplify routines. 

Why this matters for beauty innovation

As the beauty industry continues to evolve, brands are becoming more intentional about multi-functionality and rethinking traditional product categories. Consumers today crave innovation that makes their routines simpler and more effective. The rise of these next-generation lip liners demonstrates how product development is no longer just about creating something new from scratch, but also about intelligently reworking existing formats for a touch of surprise.

For brands, this approach has more practical advantages. Repurposing already-tooled applicators and textures minimizes development risks, reduces costs, and allows for faster market entry. More importantly, it provides consumers with a new makeup trend that’s foolproof - a format they’re already familiar with for a more intuitive experience. 

The future of lip liners

These new-generation lip liners complement the rising trend of natural, wearable beauty, where soft edges and blended pigments replace the more intense, heavy makeup of the past decade. We can expect even more traditional makeup products evolving into a more sheer, natural version of themselves for 2025. 

Beauty is about reinvention, and the evolution of lip liners is a perfect example of how smart, thoughtful product development can inspire newness for years to come. Innovation is often just a clever twist away.