The big artificial lip trend has been dominating the beauty scene for over half a decade now and doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. (There was a brief moment in 2018 when Kylie Jenner dissolved her lip filler which seemed to signal a turning of the tide, but just a few months later the filler was back and it was never spoken of again.) 

Not everyone is keen or ready to go under the needle to achieve a plumper pout, however, and for those people a range of wacky DIY hacks that promise bigger lips without the injection have emerged. Alongside countless lip enhancing glosses, people have had a good rummage around their kitchen cupboards and bedroom drawers and come up with solutions ranging from wasabi and suction cups to actually just gluing their lips. 

Now users on TikTok have discovered an old classic: cinnamon. Cinnamon as a trick for fuller lips has been around for a while and even makes an appearance in professional lip enhancing products – for example, in our favourite Lipstick Queen’s Lip Surge Plumper. But you can also just slap it on DIY style which is what many people on the platform have been doing. 

Last month, user Brittany Miller shared her favourite lip plumping hack in a number of videos which have since had millions of views each. In one video, Miller demonstrates how she mixes cinnamon powder with cinnamon oil to create a paste which she then rubs on her lips. After wiping off the paste, she is left with visibly fuller lips. In later videos, Miller suggests mixing the cinnamon powder with any moisturising oil for those people who found the double cinnamon combo too intense. 

Cinnamon works because when applied it irritates your lips which causes blood to rush to the surface, making them appear inflamed or puffy. Unless you are allergic to cinnamon oil, it is relatively safe to do especially compared to other hacks like the 2015 Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge which saw teens sucking small jars onto their lips to create a vacuum effect which mostly just resulted in bruises, soreness, and torn skin. You should, however, always do a patch test first to be safe.