Less than you fear, more than nothing. Most clients score lip blush between 2 and 4 out of 10, somewhere around the discomfort of threading or a scratchy facial. Nobody cries, plenty of people doze, and the dread in the waiting room is reliably worse than anything that happens in the chair. Here is what each stage actually feels like, in order.
The Numbing: Twenty Minutes Of Nothing
Your artist photographs your lips, draws the shape, then loads on a thick layer of medical grade numbing cream and leaves it to work for 20 to 30 minutes. Your lips go warm, then tingly, then oddly absent, like the fading end of a dental anaesthetic. This stage involves zero pain. Use it to choose your playlist.
The First Pass: The Strange Ten Minutes
The machine starts and you feel vibration more than anything sharp, a buzzing pressure tracing the lip line, with the sound somehow more dramatic than the sensation. The first pass is the most aware you will be, because numbing cream sits better on some patches than others. Where it has fully taken, you feel a dull scratching, like a stiff toothbrush dragged across your lip. Where it sits thinner, expect a hot, prickly scratch that makes you breathe in through your nose. Uncomfortable, yes. Painful in the wincing sense, briefly and only in spots. The corners and the centre of the lower lip complain the loudest.
The Secondary Numbing: Relief On Tap
Once the skin has been opened by the first pass, the artist applies a second numbing gel. This one works fast and deep. From this point, the remaining sixty to ninety minutes of work register as buzzing, pushing and a vague, swollen pressure. Lots of clients describe the second half as genuinely relaxing. Some fall asleep mid-treatment, which says everything the pain scale cannot. If anything starts to sting, say so. Topping up the numbing takes seconds, and a good artist offers before you ask.
What Makes It Hurt More For Some People
Pain is not evenly distributed. Caffeine and alcohol in the previous 24 hours sharpen every nerve ending. The week of your period lowers your threshold, so move the booking if you can. Anxiety amplifies everything, which is why studios that talk you through each step produce calmer clients and better results. One medical point matters above all the rest: if you have ever had a cold sore, the treatment can trigger an outbreak, so you need antiviral tablets from your GP or pharmacist starting a couple of days beforehand. That conversation is not optional.
Afterwards: Sunburn, Not Agony
You leave with lips that look brilliantly overdone, roughly 40 per cent darker and noticeably swollen. They feel like a day at the beach without SPF: hot, tight and chapped rather than painful. The swelling drops within 24 to 48 hours. For the first few days, you sip through a glass rather than a straw, skip spicy food and hot drinks, and resist picking the light flaking that follows. By day five, the drama is gone, the colour has softened by nearly half, and the only sensation left is mild dryness that balm handles easily.
The Verdict
A standard tattoo hurts more. Laser hair removal hurts more. Eyebrow threading is a close cousin in intensity but is over far quicker. If you can sit through a long dental hygienist appointment, you can sit through this without drama, and any reputable studio offering lip blush in London will manage the numbing so well that your strongest memory of the day ends up being the colour, not the needle.
