Do you want a natural lip balm that will save your dry cracked lips and fill them with comforting moisture? Make this DIY lanolin lip balm and you’ll never look for another chapstick again.

Lanolin Lip Balm Recipe for Soft Lips

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Do you want a natural lip balm that will save your dry cracked lips and fill them with comforting moisture? Make this DIY lanolin lip balm and you’ll never look for another chapstick again. It’s great to make natural body products and know just what you’re using on your body and your family’s.

Lanolin lip balm in tubes on the counter with some sprigs of lavender

Lanolin Lip Balm DIY

I have a hard time using store-bought lip balm. I suspect the reason is allergies. I have a sensitivity to fragrances that are jammed into every store-bought product, but most lip balm available in stores contain Vitamin E which many people have an allergy to.

I hate the idea of putting tons of chemicals on my lips. I use natural body products for everything I can. Most of the time I just smear a little coconut oil from the kitchen on my lips and call it good. But in the wintertime, you need something a little thicker to keep those lips protected.

I love putting ingredients on my body product that have beneficial properties, so I love ingredients like coconut oil, honey, lavender, and lanolin. It’s not as hard as you might think to ditch and switch to natural products.

Best ingredients for lip balm

I’ve made many different chapstick recipes and this one is the best natural lip balm recipe I’ve come up with. My lips stay soft and supple all winter long with no peeling or pain.

What causes chapped, peeling, burning lips? There are so many things that are hard on our lips. Smoking, sunburn, consuming artificial sweeteners, wind, dry air from the heater and so much more can cause cracked dry lips. Also, if you don’t consume enough water, you can get chapped lips.

There are ingredients in lip products such as lipstick and chapstick that can cause chapping as well. Reactions to Vitamin E, but also parabens in lipstick, fragrances in lip products, camphor, and menthol as well. There are so many artificial ingredients in over the counter products that you might be doing more harm than good using them.

For me, the best thing that helps my lips is coconut oil and lanolin. They both have mending properties that help your lips heal as well as softening properties and moisturizing properties. Couple that together with a few other great ingredients and you have the best lip balm recipe.

Do your lip balm ingredients need to be organic? It’s up to you, but when putting something on or in my body, I opt for organic when I can. I would much prefer to know my lip balm is pure and natural and even better if it’s organic. Try to find organic products when you can and if you can afford them, use them.

Medicated lip balm like Carmex and Blistex can help speed the healing of your lips, but they may contain harmful ingredients as well. Essential oils can have some of the same properties as those ingredients but come from natural sources.

I love using lavender essential oil to help soothe cuts, scrapes, and burns. Peppermint oil is helpful and so are others such as Rosemary oil. Just make sure you get your essential oils from a reliable and pure source.

Shea butter lip balm recipe

Shea butter makes your lips feel velvety smooth. I love using it in lip balms, lotions, and salves of all kinds. When using shea butter, make sure not to heat it up to too high of a temperature or it can get gritty. I like to melt all of my ingredients well over a double boiler and then add my shea butter last and let the warm ingredients melt my shea butter slowly as I stir.

Shea butter helps give the lip balm stability and keeps it from getting too soft. It also has many benefits such as reducing inflammation, restoring elasticity, reducing redness, and acne, helping with itching, and reducing the appearance of stretch marks. It’s incredibly soothing and moisturizing.

Lanolin for lips 

Lanolin is my secret weapon in this lip balm. It’s a natural substance sheep produce on their skin. I remember helping shear sheep as a kid and when we finished, our hands would be as soft as baby’s butts from all the lanolin on the sheep’s skin. Talk about the perfect natural lotion!

Lanolin moisturizes skin by drawing moisture from the air into the lips as well as holding moisture in the lips. It helps soothe irritation and itchy dry skin.

Homemade lip balm

Coconut oil is a wonderful carrier oil that helps soften the lip balm and distribute all of the ingredients. Coconut oil can kill harmful microorganisms. It can help with the effects of eczema and provide moisture to the skin.

Honey is full of antioxidants and antibacterial properties. It helps give your skin a youthful, healthy glow.

Beeswax is not only a thickening agent for your lip balm, it also is a moisturizer and has anti-itching properties. It soothes and protects the skin as well.

melting lanolin lip balm ingredients in double boiler
empty lip balm tubes tied together with rubber bands
pouring lip balm into tubes
hot lanolin lip balm cooling in tubes
homemade lip balm
  • Ingredients:
  • 1 T. shea butter
  • 1 ½ T. coconut oil
  • 1 tsp. honey
  • 1 T. beeswax
  • 1 tsp. lanolin
  • 5 drops lavender essential oil

Melt coconut oil, beeswax, and lanolin in a bowl over a pan of water. Slowly stir as it melts. Once it’s completely melted, remove from heat and add shea butter and honey. Stir as it melts. Add lavender essential oil and stir. Pour lanolin lip balm into pots or tubes and let harden.

lip balm ingredients, lavender, lanolin, shea butter on counter

Breathe easy lip balm

  • Ingredients:
  • 1 T. Shea butter
  • 2 T. coconut oil
  • 1 T. beeswax
  • 1 tsp. lanolin
  • 5 drops Breathe essential oil

Melt coconut oil, beeswax, and lanolin in a bowl over a pan of water. Slowly stir as it melts. Once it’s completely melted, remove from heat and add shea butter. Stir as it melts. Add breathe essential oil and stir. Pour lanolin lip balm into pots or tubes and let harden.

Try your hand at making some DIY lip balm because I know you’re going to love it. And you can also make these other great body products for a healthier you:

All of these products make wonderful gifts too. 

ingredients and containers for making homemade diy lip balm

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18 Comments

  1. Hi – do you source your own lanolin or buy it? If you source your own – could you share how you get it from the sheeps wool. Thank you

    1. Hi Karen,
      I buy mine, I try to get organic and usually get it online from Amazon. I would love to source it. How fun would that be? I remember as a child, petting my grandparent’s sheep and getting it on my hands, but I don’t have any idea, how you collect it. It would be fun to learn. Thank you for reaching out and for reading. I hope you have a great day.

  2. Thanks for the recipes. I usually use herb (calendula, plantain, comfrey and/or chamomile) infused oils in my balms and salves depending on what I am making. I like your bug bite recipe and plan to make it soon I won’t, however, ever put honey in any recipe ever again – it ALWAYS separates out and I get globs of honey throughout my salves and balms. I don’t know why – I’ve waited for the mixture to cool down a little before adding and have stirred well. I just can’t figure out why it never works. Sorry to vent but I just don’t understand it. Anyway, I like your recipes so thanks for posting!

  3. Hi.. I’ve read that lanolin has a strong smell, did it over power the smell of the essential oils on this recipe?.. And can I add flavor oil here?.. I’m planning to make this because I have experiencing a very chapped lips at the moment.. Thank you..

    1. It has a little bit of a natural smell, but to me it’s not a strong smell. The essential oils smell stronger than the lanolin in my opinion. Thanks for checking out the recipe.

  4. I’ve notice a lot of these type of recipes call for storing the homemade lip balm in the refrigerator. Do you recommend this too? Or will the shelf life be fine in ambient temperatures? Thanks!

    1. Hi Laura,
      I haven’t ever stored mine in the refrigerator and I have some lip balm that’s still great after 6 months. Maybe it depends on the ingredients, but for this one, it seems fine to leave it out. Thanks for checking it out and for asking.

  5. How to you keep the honey from separating and sinking to the bottom of the bowl? This always happens for me.
    Thx!