Is UV protection necessary for lips with Lip sunscreen as well?
Unlike many countries where people think sunscreen is only necessary on sunny days, in Korea, sunscreen is an essential step in Kbeauty.
However, the idea of protecting lips from UV rays is still relatively weak.
Therefore, the variety of lip sunscreen is quite limited in Korea.
Only recently have new brands started to release more products, and it’s easier to find popular international brands’ lip sunscreens.
In Korea, only about one brand offers a lip sunscreen product with SPF50, while most products have SPF values between 10 and 30, which are not very high.
Contrary to this situation, Did you know that UV protection is necessary for lips as well?
The skin on the lips is very thin and lacks melanin, the pigment that protects the skin, making it more sensitive to UV rays.
Prolonged exposure to UV rays can stimulate melanin production, darkening the lips, and causing moisture to evaporate more quickly.
This can lead to dull, unevenly colored lips that lose their characteristic red vitality.
I recently tried a lip balm with spf from a famous Australian brand, but I didn’t use it often due to its stiff texture, which was not very protective for the lips.
The protective layer on the lips is thinner than that of the face, so the application of a lip sunscreen should be smoother than that of a face stick.
However, if the organic UV filter ingredients are too oily and focus only on application, the hardness becomes too weak, making it easy to break, complicating the molding process.
On the other hand, if the hardness is increased, it results in a stiff texture, making it difficult to achieve the same feel as the lip balms commonly used in the market.
That’s why many manufacturers cannot make lip sunscreen with high SPF until now.
Recently, one of WITH.C KOREA’s clients, who was satisfied with our sun products, decided to proceed with lip sunscreen as well.
However, even our manufacturing partners who worked on WITH.C KOREA’s sun products with us were unsure if they could develop the target SPF50 within the set period, as it was their first time developing a lip sunscreen.
This photo shows a stick without SPF and WITH.C KOREA’s sun lip balm under an ultraviolet camera.
The lip balm appears black due to the SPF, while the regular stick remains white in its original color.
Contrary to our concerns, our laboratory director, with 40 years of technical expertise, developed a product with SPF 60 PA++++, exceeding Korea’s maximum of SPF50, within a month.
(The actual IN-VITRO test results showed SPF63.64 and PA 73.54.)
The application was excellent and very similar to our existing OEM product, a Koran lip balm with 16.5% shea butter content.
While SPF60 might be excessive for Korea, where it’s hot only in the summer, it’s very useful in countries where it’s hot all year round.
Would you like to launch a lip sunscreen in preparation for hot weather?
Please contact WITH.C KOREA, the representative Korean Vegan OEM ODM company.