Lips are a defining feature that greatly impacts facial harmony. A study that tracked participants’ eyes to decipher which physical features they found most appealing shows that your lips—both their size and location—play an important role in balancing your features.
However, there is no universal “ideal” ratio or standardized formula for enhancing your lips to complement your features.
At Pearlman Aesthetic Surgery, we’ve mastered the science and artistry behind lip enhancements, and that balance looks different for everyone. Our renowned surgeons and skilled injectors are dedicated to empowering beauty, and that starts by empowering you.
So, how do you decide between non-surgical lip enhancements like fillers and surgical procedures like lip lifts? From the process to the downtime to the maintenance, our team is here to help you compare your options.
Your Options for Lip Injections
In NYC, there are thousands of medical spas that offer lip injections. With so many providers and types of injections to choose from, it’s important to understand your injection options on a detailed level; they aren’t all equal.
Dermal Fillers
When most people think about lip injections, they think about lip fillers. These hyaluronic acid-based formulas, such as Juvéderm and Restylane, work beneath your skin’s surface, binding to water and the surrounding tissues to add volume to the area. “Plumping” your lips this way restructures them while smoothing vertical lip lines.
These kinds of lip injections in NYC offer immediate results, usually with minimal downtime, consisting of minor swelling and/or bruising. The injection process itself only takes about 30 minutes, and our team uses a local or topical anesthetic to ensure the most comfortable experience.
While your exact duration of results may vary based on the formula and amount of filler injected—and your body’s unique anatomy, which determines how quickly you “metabolize” the formula—most patients’ results last between 4 and 6 months. With regular maintenance injections, however, you can uphold your lips’ look indefinitely.
We recommend lip fillers for patients looking to address:
- Aging lips
- Asymmetry
- Thin lips
- Lip lines
Beyond offering people of all ages a lip plump in NYC, we also use dermal fillers to enhance areas such as the cheeks, under eyes, and hands.
→ Explore Your Facial Filler Options
Dr. Pearlman’s Cupid Bow Technique
Many people are familiar with the appearance of “overfilled” lips, which generally result from the work of an inexperienced provider; however, dermal fillers don’t have to look unnatural. As an experienced plastic surgeon, Dr. Steven Pearlman and his extraordinary staff of highly skilled injectors—Lisa Vasquez, NP, and Christine Ross, RN, CANS—don’t settle for standardized lip injections in NYC that leave you with a “trout pout” or “duck lips.”
Instead, his cupid’s bow technique, which has been featured in Vogue Magazine, offers natural-looking yet impactful results. First, we use a hyaluronic acid filler to restore lost volume to the lips, focusing on the lips’ borders to redefine them like you would with lip liner. Then, we inject Botox to soften vertical lip lines before plumping the remainder of the lips with dermal filler.
PRF Injections
Outside of traditional dermal fillers, we also offer PRF lip injections in NYC. PRF, which stands for platelet-rich fibrin, is a natural substance derived from your blood. That platelet-rich substance contains growth factors, which act as biostimulants. Biostimulants work differently than other fillers, plumping your lips from the inside out.
While the skilled team at Pearlman Aesthetic Surgery has perfected our dermal filler techniques to deliver natural-looking results, PRF injections work naturally. By ramping up collagen and elastin production, this gel formula rebuilds your lips’ internal structure—cell by cell—for fuller, softer lips. The proteins we collect from your blood don’t just add volume; they also hydrate your skin and improve its texture, tone, and elasticity, offering improvements you can see and feel, in areas such as the lips, cheeks, temples, and under eyes.
Just like fillers, PRF injections require about 24 hours of “downtime,” which consists of minimal swelling and bruising from the injection process. However, unlike with fillers, your results will be gradual rather than immediate, building as your collagen and elastin levels rise. We may suggest multiple treatments to achieve the best results depending on your situation, scheduling each of them about 4 weeks apart. Remember, your results will continue to improve for months as your skin puts its new resources to use and rebuilds from the inside out, offering results that last up to 12 months.
Botox “Lip Flips”
At Pearlman Aesthetic Surgery, we recognize the true powers of wrinkle relaxers like Botox as more than an anti-aging treatment. When artfully injected into the upper lip, Botox can reposition the lip muscles to reduce the appearance of a “gummy” smile and thin upper lip. Unlike fillers, this approach does not add external volume to your lips. Instead, it works by carefully repositioning your upper lip to make it appear slightly more voluminous and/or to reduce how much of your gums show when smiling.
In short, a lip flip works around your lips—along the border—to slightly reshape and reposition them, while fillers and PRF injections work inside your lips to increase their size more drastically.
While the injection process is similar to that of dermal fillers, it’s important to note that you will not see results immediately after receiving Botox lip injections in NYC. It takes about a week for the formula to take full effect and limit specific muscle movements in your lips, offering results that last about 8 weeks.
Lip Surgery: A Lasting Solution
If you’re looking for a long-lasting lip enhancement, then you need to consider surgery rather than lip injections, which all require regular maintenance.
Lip Lift
A lip lift is a procedure that reshapes the upper lip, shortening the distance between it and your nose for a fuller, more youthful appearance. Dr. Pearlman performs this surgery very safely and comfortably under local anesthesia, precisely removing a small amount of skin beneath the nose before closing the incision in layers to make scarring virtually invisible. Elevating and slightly turning the upper lip outward can also reveal more of your inner lip and its pinker color, combatting thin or aging lips and naturally restoring the cupid’s bow.
This surgery offers some of the longest-lasting and natural-looking results of any lip enhancement—far outlasting those from any kind of lip injections in NYC—because it removes skin itself to shorten the philtrum (the area between your nose and upper lip). This technique reduces the degree of lip plumping, which is an inherent side effect of lip fillers. Thanks to Dr. Pearlman’s advanced technique, your results are likely to be permanent, rarely requiring future updates, if ever. While you may notice a slight relaxation to the area within about a year of your surgery, the results from then on last for years to come.
Dr. Pearlman and our team of skilled providers will walk you through exactly how to care for your lips after surgery to minimize pain and support a fast healing process. While you may experience some discomfort in the area over the days after surgery, managing these short-lived symptoms is often as simple as taking oral pain medication. Most patients return to their job after 3 days, but remember that we will remove your stitches in less than a week to finalize your recovery, which will take a few months in total.
→ Get the Full Guide to Lip Surgery in NYC
Deciding Which Lip Enhancement Is Right for You
Your situation, from your aesthetic goals to your lifestyle to your budget, is unique—and so is your anatomy—so it’s important that you don’t settle for standardized care. While none of these lip enhancement methods are universally better than the others, it’s important to consider that they all come with their own cost, recovery, and maintenance, working in various ways to deliver different forms of enhancement.
No matter which solution you choose, surgical or not, it should be 100% tailored to you.
Prioritize Choosing the Right Provider
While choosing the right kind of surgery or lip injections in NYC is important, choosing the right hands to perform that procedure is equally important. Remember to explore your potential provider’s website to learn more about their qualifications, as every practice operates on its own standards—many spas are not led by doctors or surgeons who truly understand skin anatomy.
Do they offer helpful online tools? Does their website have before and after photos? Is it easy to contact their team? Do they offer plenty of resources, like videos, blogs, and newsletters?
Don’t just take their word for it, either. Read their reviews to see what patients are saying before scheduling a consultation to come to your own conclusions.
< What Our Patients Are Saying >
The Lips You Want Without the Side Effects You Don’t
You don’t have to choose between “overdone” lip injections in NYC and simply accepting qualities about your lips that you aren’t fond of. At Pearlman Aesthetic Surgery, we offer the most effective lip enhancements for every situation—from permanent surgeries to low-commitment injections—and they all focus on enhancing your natural beauty, not overpowering it.
If you’re ready to clear the path toward the most confident version of yourself, schedule your consultation with Dr. Pearlman, Christine Ross, RN, or Lisa Vasquez, NP. Beyond lip enhancements, we offer a range of surgical and non-surgical solutions to increase your confidence, from ear pinning surgery in NYC to post-weight loss body procedures in NYC. Because you deserve to feel your best about every part of your body during every stage of life.
Dr. Pearlman is uniquely dual board-certified in both facial plastic and reconstructive surgery and in otolaryngology—head and neck surgery (ENT)—and has performed thousands of successful procedures. He leads the leaders, traveling across the world as a visiting professor to educate future surgeons on his proven approach while serving as a clinical professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
→ Read More About Dr. Pearlman’s Awards From Castle Connolly
Consistently recognized over the past decade, Dr. Pearlman has been honored among the top 5% of doctors.
Not quite ready for an in-person visit? While nothing can replace an in-person consultation, you can use our virtual procedure match tool to explore our available techniques. Answer a few questions about your goals, and we’ll send you customized recommendations right to your inbox!
