Lip skin, treated at the depth its collagen lives

The skin of the lip is among the thinnest on the body, and it never rests. Talking and expression move it many thousands of times a day; it carries little of the oil-gland support that cushions the rest of the face; and it sits exposed to sunlight day in and day out. So the lip area is often the first place a softening of structure shows: fine vertical lines that gather in the skin above the upper lip, a lip surface that has lost some of its smoothness, and a vermilion border, the lip's defining edge, that has softened with the years.

SMOOTH mode treats that loss at its source. The laser delivers its energy as a sequence of sub-second pulses, each one adding a little warmth without letting heat build at the surface. The result is even, controlled heating a fraction of a millimetre down, in the layer of the lip-skin where collagen is held.

Warmth at that depth prompts the lip to do two things: to remodel the collagen it already holds, and to begin synthesising new collagen of its own, a process called neocollagenesis. Across a course of sessions, the lip-skin smooths and firms because it has rebuilt its own structure.

Nothing is added; the change is the lip's own.

A session is mostly preparation. The lip area is numbed first, which takes twenty to thirty minutes; the SmoothLips treatment itself is short, usually five to ten minutes. With the numbing done, the laser feels like little more than warmth passing across the lip.

Most people notice a touch of swelling and warmth in the lip on the day, settling over the next day or two. The lip area can feel mildly tender for a day or so; this is the lip-skin reacting to the controlled warmth and beginning to renew. There is no incision and no needle, and the recovery shows mostly to you.

SmoothLips is at its fullest as a course rather than in a single session. A typical plan covers four to six sessions, set three to six weeks apart; your clinician matches the number and the timing to your skin. Across the course the lip-skin builds collagen of its own, and the result develops steadily and continues to develop for a time after the final treatment as the new collagen matures. A single session is a real treatment in its own right; the recommended course is what gives the fullest result.

The lip is one of the most expressive parts of the face, and treating it well asks for an experienced hand. At Pink, SmoothLips is in the hands of the same two senior clinicians who lead the eye-area work, Porsha and Stephy. They examine your skin and set the plan themselves, and they are the ones who carry it out. Many clients have SmoothEye and SmoothLips as a pair, treated together in clinic; either also stands on its own. You can meet Porsha and Stephy on the clinicians page.

SmoothLips also suits every skin type. Pink calibrates the treatment for the tone and condition of each person's skin, and holds every Fitzpatrick type to a single standard of care.

Six tones, one standard.