If you're looking for a gentle way to achieve smooth lips, this DIY turmeric lip scrub recipe is the perfect solution. Made with natural ingredients, this easy homemade scrub is ideal for exfoliating and nourishing even the most sensitive skin.
As the cold weather settles in and winter months draw near, dealing with chapped, dry lips becomes a struggle. Paired with the drying effects of artificial heating, it can feel like a never-ending battle!
To tackle this seasonal challenge, it’s essential to care for the delicate skin on your lips. While lip balm is a must-have, it’s often not enough.
Exfoliating away dead skin cells is key—and with this easy DIY lip scrub recipe, you can whip up your own within minutes!
Creating your own lip scrub is not only a straightforward and budget-friendly remedy, but it also lets you tailor the ingredients to meet your specific needs, keeping your lips soft, smooth, and well-hydrated throughout winter.
In this post, I’ll show you how to create your own homemade turmeric lip scrub, so you can enjoy soft, supple lips while harnessing the natural benefits of turmeric.
Benefits
- gently exfoliates
- gets rid of dead skin cells
- increases blood flow
- nourishes and replenishes
- healing effect (anti-inflammatory properties)
- plumps lips (temporary effect)
- improves skin health
- all-natural ingredients—no toxic chemicals!
One of the most beneficial effects of lip scrubs is that they gently exfoliate, thus, removing dead skin cells from your lips, and encouraging new skin cells to come up to the surface.
When you massage your lips with the exfoliating ingredients (such as brown sugar and turmeric), you increase blood circulation, which carries nutrients to this area. More blood flow means your lips get the nourishment they need.
Also, the essential fatty acids of the oil(s) additionally nourish the delicate, and possibly, dry skin of the lips.
Due to the massage and stimulation of the blood flow, another effect of this lip scrub is plump lips. You can enhance this by adding peppermint oil (please note, it’s only a temporary effect). Over time, while the skin recovers, you’ll notice that your lips become smoother and healthier.
Benefits of Turmeric
- healthy lips
- gently exfoliates
- hydrates naturally
- brightens pigmentation
The benefits of turmeric are well-known for its potent medicinal properties. This extraordinary, golden-yellow spice has many healing properties, including for our skin.
Turmeric has powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties owing to its active compound, curcumin, which soothes dry, cracked lips and promotes healing.
Combined with the other exfoliating ingredients, turmeric also acts as a mild exfoliant to remove dead skin cells for smooth lips.
Turmeric helps enhance the absorption of hydrating agents—like the oils (or honey) we use in this DIY turmeric lip scrub recipe—leaving your lips soft and nourished.
Another great benefit of turmeric is that it can help lighten dark or pigmented lips caused by sun exposure, smoking, or dehydration and encourages the skin to return to its natural colour.
Ingredients
- carrier oil of choice (like jojoba oil or almond oil)
- exfoliating ingredient of choice (like brown sugar)
- organic turmeric powder
- essential oils (such as lemon essential oil)
Optional Ingredients
- shea butter
- raw honey
- vitamin E oil
- aloe vera gel
(see recipe card for quantities)
Carrier Oils
We need the powerful essential fatty acids that oils contain for soft lips. They offer incredible health benefits for our skin, especially for dry skin. From hydration, to anti-inflammatory properties, to fortifying the skin barrier, to healing small wounds.
The smooth texture of oil serves as a lubricant for the exfoliating grains (whether you prefer salt, sugar, or coffee grounds), helping to prevent skin irritation.
It’s totally up to you which carrier oil you want to choose for your homemade turmeric lip scrub. They all improve skin health and promote healthy lips.
Extra virgin olive oil, organic coconut oil, avocado oil, argan oil, castor oil and almond oil are more on the heavier side and will nourish your broken, dry lips a little better.
Jojoba oil and grapeseed oil are on the lighter side but nourishing nonetheless. In fact, my favourite carrier oil is jojoba oil because of its high vitamin E content which is excellent for smoothing dry skin, preventing flakiness and improve skin elasticity.
Please note when choosing coconut oil: During the colder months, it’s solid! This means, your lip scrub turns solid, too! Not immediately but if you store it (and you most likely will). It’ll be a pain to get it out of the jar or container. Alternatively, you can use MCT oil or fractionated coconut oil.
Exfoliant
My favourite exfoliant for my homemade lip scrub recipes, or homemade scrubs in general, is sugar. Sugar is a natural hydrating agent for your skin, thus, it has a moisturising effect.
When it comes to sugar, the most important thing to remember is that you always want to use a fine texture. I don’t recommend the rather large grains of raw sugar for your lips (it’s great for your body though).
White sugar, brown sugar, or even fine cane sugar are your best choices. Whether you’d like to buy organic sugar, is up to you. Organic is obviously always best but I think for this recipe, it’s okay if you buy regular.
Alternatives to Sugar
Alternatives to sugar are fine salt and coffee grounds.
Salt: Salt has antibacterial benefits which can help in the healing process, but may also sting chapped, inflamed lips.
Coffee: Before you ditch the coffee grounds in the morning after brewing your delicious cup of coffee, wait! Reuse them for your natural lip scrub! Make sure they’re not too coarse, though!
The caffeine in coffee stimulates blood flow, and in combination with your massage, you can enhance that effect. I’ve got a honey coffee scrub recipe here on my blog that you can use for a lip scrub too!
Turmeric
I prefer buying organic turmeric powder to reduce the exposure of chemicals. The curcumin content does play a role here as it’s the magic component with all the great benefits!
Also, always make sure that your herbs and spices are never more than one year old. The older they get, the less potency they have!
Essential Oils
Essential Oils are completely optional. But adding them also gives you a chance to enhance the healing properties of your DIY turmeric lip scrub.
Lavender essential oil is my all-time favourite ingredient for most of my recipes. Lavender has antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, soothing and healing properties and helps improve your skin health and encourage your lips to heal.
Another great oil for chapped, dry lips is chamomile essential oil because it’s soothing and beneficial for red, inflamed and sensitive skin.
If your goal is to brighten pigmentation, lemon essential oil is your ally! However, this oil is phototoxic which means, that when your skin is exposed to sunlight, it may get irritated by the oil. As we are wiping off the scrub at the end, this shouldn’t be a worry, but I’d like to mention it here anyway!
Peppermint oil seems to be a favourite amongst natural beauty bloggers because of its plumping effect on our skin and lips (though, only temporarily). It does have antibacterial properties, too, and stimulates blood circulation, but may irritate broken lips.
Optional Ingredients
In addition to the above-mentioned ingredients, you can add shea butter (for deeper hydration and healing), raw honey (antibacterial, healing and hydrating), vitamin E oil (an antioxidant and added nourishment for the skin) and aloe vera gel (highly moisturising).
In my opinion, these optional ingredients are a bit of a waste in this DIY turmeric lip scrub because I’m convinced, they make more sense in a lip balm (like this easy 3 ingredient DIY lip balm). This way, they stay on the lips for longer and have the time to replenish the skin fully.
As always, your choice. You can leave the scrub on your lips for ten minutes as well, like a hydrating mask. This ensures a better absorption of the ingredients.
Instructions
How to make this DIY turmeric lip scrub
In a small bowl, combine your chosen ingredients until you achieve a slightly crumby, thick paste. Transfer into a small jar or airtight container for storage. Done!
I prefer making small batches because we only use our homemade turmeric lip scrub for a very small part of our body and won’t need much.
How to use this DIY turmeric lip scrub
This homemade turmeric lip scrub has to be applied gently to the delicate skin of our lips!
Step 1. Dig up a small amount of lip scrub with the tip of your finger and massage your lips in a circular motion. Be gentle here and don’t apply too much pressure. Do this for about 1 minute.
Please listen to your body, to your lips. If you can’t tolerate the scrub for that long, stop when you have to! Be gentle, always!
Step 2. Remove the scrub with warm water or a warm wash cloth (use a dark one to avoid staining it with the yellow turmeric), making sure you do this gently.
You may find a turmeric residue (yellow colouring on skin) on your lips afterwards, even after washing it off. Don’t worry, it’ll go away.
Step 3. Finish your lip care routine with applying a natural lip balm (like this easy DIY 2-ingredient lip balm) to moisturise your lips.
How often you can use this DIY turmeric lip scrub
As with all homemade scrubs, once a week is enough. You need to give your skin time to regenerate itself.
If you have very dry lips or if they’re chapped, apply pure cocoa butter or shea butter to your lips and let them absorb it. Try to avoid conventional lip balm as they contain drying ingredients.
Storage
As always, if using essential oils, you need to store your personal care products away from the sunlight. Ideally, in an amber glass jar or airtight container or keep them in your cupboard.
Store this DIY turmeric lip scrub in your bathroom cupboard, at room temperature, for a few months. The shelf life of sugar is fairly long. Just double-check the oil’s expiry date as it can go rancid!
Top Tip
This wonderful and easy recipe also makes a fantastic face scrub! Its fine texture is great for sensitive facial skin! And if using sea salt, it’s also a great treatment for blemished skin and acne!
You may also like to check out my other DIY lip scrub recipe here on my blog.
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp / 25 g white or brown sugar or fine sea salt or coffee grounds, see notes
- 1 tbsp Jojoba Oil see notes for alternatives
- ½ tsp turmeric powder preferably organic
- 1 drop lemon essential oil optional, or lavender essential oil, see notes
Optional Ingredients
- 1 tsp shea butter
- 1 tsp raw honey
- 1 tsp aloe vera gel pure, with natural preservatives
- 5 drops pure vitamin E oil
Instructions
How to Make
- In a small bowl, mix your chosen ingredients. Transfer into a small jar or container for storage. Done!
How to Use
- Dig up a small amount of scrub with the tip of your finger and massage your lips in a circular motion. Be gentle here and don’t apply too much pressure. Do this for 1 minute.Please listen to your body, to your lips. If you can’t tolerate the scrub for that long, stop when you have to! Be gentle, always!
- Remove the scrub with warm water or a warm washcloth (use a dark one to avoid staining it with the yellow turmeric), making sure you do this gently.You may find a turmeric residue (yellow colouring on skin) on your lips afterwards, even after washing it off. Don’t worry, it’ll go away.
- Finish with applying a natural lip balm to moisturise your lips.
- As with all scrubs, once a week is enough. You need to give your skin time to regenerate itself.
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