Guest Author - Jilly Florio

One year when packing for a move, I got a lip color wake up call. I realized all my lipsticks were just replays of the same color, over and over. It's one thing to find a color you like, but it's another to keep buying slight variations of the same lip color, to the exclusion of ever trying something new.

My old standby lip colors are the beachy nudes. When I was younger, I felt self-conscious about wearing makeup. I always went for colors that were only subtly more colorful than my own skin. To me, it looked like I was "made up." But in reality, my makeup palette was almost invisible.

I am still attracted to beachy, bronzey, and barely there dusty nudes. But now I enjoy using a full range of color to suit my moods and styles.

Lip Colors Every Woman Should Own: Pales, Nudes, Bronzes

Pales

Pales include any color that is in actuality lighter than your own lip skin's tone. This includes lighter pinks, light golds, whites, pearls and even shimmery novelty colors like blues and lavenders. These colors are pretty and festive for winter parties like Christmas, New Years and winter birthdays.

Besides reserving pales for festive winter looks, pales also come into their own on the beach. Hot summer days can carry off a pale pink or pearly white, emphasizing the contrast in darker skin, creating a "cooling" appearance for fun events on hot days.

Pales are a young look. Teens can get away with daily pales. In adult women, only *very* light skin tones can use pales for everyday color.

Nudes

Nudes come in many shades, from a light 'skin' tone to a hint of red, peach, pink, or even deep brown.

Nudes offer a universally flattering light wash of color, and are considered very wearable. There are great nudes on the market for all ages and skin tones.

Nudes are useful for daily wear, but are not generally festive enough for special events, parties, and some professions. In addition, many women enjoy brighter, deeper colors and feel "naked" in a nude lipstick.

Even for women addicted to darker lips, however, a nude lip color should be a staple in everyone's palette. A woman sporting red lipstick everyday deserves a clean, fresh look from time to time.

A nude look is pretty, classy, perfectly casual and often takes years off of a woman's face.

Bronzes

Bronzes are a step up from nudes and the opposite of pales. While a pale is lighter than your own lip color, and nudes add a subtle wash of color, a bronze makes a statement. Bronzes offer shimmery looks in several metallic hues, from bronzey golds, through bronzey coppers and on to pure metallic browns. Even a light bronze is darker than most peoples' natural lip skin.

While pales are a young look and can be worn most easily by women with the palest skins, bronzes are the opposite; offering a more mature look worn most easily by tanned and darker skin tones.

Bronzes offer a great anytime or party look for the summer, with their smoldering, sultry appeal. It's a wearable vacation color - think of the bronze lipsticks often showcased on models photographing in the tropics. Bronzes also come into their own for evenings out.

For darker skin tones (through olives, browns and blacks) bronzes are the perfect daily lip color and should be a lip palette staple.

Since bronzes are a mature look, these hues can look strange on teenagers and are not a good choice for aging skin. Women with feathering lip lines might wish to dial down the metallics(shimmer emphasizes wrinkles)and look instead into the brighter nudes, clean browns, or deeper non-shimmery reds, pinks and corals.

My suggestion: This lip combo from DuWop is has several nudes that can be shimmered up or bronzed down, depending on what look you want to customize between daywear and an evening out. The lip colors also contain antioxidants, adding a "lip facial" element to lipstick that I especially like: