Kayla Young
Lip gloss can enhance your lips without dramatically altering their appearance. However, if you end up getting some lip gloss on your clothes, all subtlety will go out the window.
And you may find yourself struggling to go out the window, too!
In this short guide, we’re going to answer the age-old question “Does lip gloss come out of clothes?” To give you a short answer, yes it does.
However, we’d recommend that you keep reading to figure out more about the techniques that you can use to remove lip gloss from your clothing.
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Does Lip Gloss Come Out of Clothes?
In most cases, lip gloss tends to be pretty greasy, and if you have any experience doing laundry, then you may think that this doesn’t bode well for your clothes.
While it’s true that lip gloss can stain clothing, you’ll find that you can often get lip gloss out of your clothes using at-home solutions without damaging your clothing.
Of course, there are a few exceptions to this rule, including getting lip gloss on clothes with delicate fabrics.
If you notice that your clothes have a “dry clean only” tag on them, then you may understandably be a little hesitant to get the lip gloss out of them yourself. And you’d be right to.
If you want to make sure that you don’t damage the fabric of your clothes while trying to get the lip gloss out of them, you want to bring them to a dry cleaner. Once there, you’ll be able to ask the pros whether or not they think they can get a particular stain out using their usual methods.
In the vast majority of cases, you shouldn’t see any remnants of the lip gloss stain once the pros are done with your clothes.
But what if you have clothes that you can wash at home with lip gloss stains on them? There are a few different techniques that you can use to get your clothes back into shape.
Removing Lip Gloss From Your Clothes
So how does lip gloss come out of clothes if you’re doing it yourself? Start off by scraping any of the lip gloss off of the article of clothing before you apply any cleaning products or solutions.
You can do this with anything that’s relatively flat-sided, though our favorite tool is an old credit card or gift card.
Do this a few times to make sure that you have most of the lip gloss removed from the fabric so that you don’t end up rubbing it in deeper.
Once you’re done, you’ll then want to soak the spot where the stain is with a grease-fighting pre-detergent so that you can weaken it for subsequent cleaning products.
Once this has been applied and it’s started breaking down the lip gloss, you can wash the article of clothing in hot water.
You’ll typically want to avoid using cold water for this since it’s a lot less effective at fighting grease. That’s why we typically wash our dishes in hot water.
If the stain is still there, repeat the process, once again applying the pre-detergent.
If possible, turn up the heat a notch for the next wash to the maximum setting, provided this won’t end up damaging your clothing. Once you’re done with the wash, you’ll want to air-dry your clothes.
Alternative Methods
While this technique should work for most lip gloss stains, there are a few alternate methods that you can use if you find that the pre-detergent and washing in hot water method doesn’t work. We’re going to explore how you can use both rubbing alcohol and ammonia to get lip gloss out of your clothes.
Rubbing Alcohol
Rubbing alcohol is one of the most versatile cleaners and disinfectants that you’ll find in your house, and most lip gloss stains won’t stand a chance against it. If you want your rubbing alcohol to be as effective as possible, you’ll want to use a high concentration (usually 90%+) isopropyl alcohol.
Start by soaking an old rag or towel in the rubbing alcohol and then start blotting the spot on your clothes with the lip gloss stain. Be sure to avoid rubbing it into the article of clothing because this will only worsen the stain and it may even spread it around to the surrounding fabric.
Ammonia
Ammonia is another common household cleaning agent, and while it may sound kind of intimidating to use ammonia on your clothes, it typically won’t have any lasting effects on them. For this method, you’ll need your bottle of ammonia, a small container, and some cotton swabs.
Start by rinsing off the stain with some water before you get started. Pour your ammonia into the container and start dipping your cotton swabs into it. Once your cotton swab is properly soaked, use it to start dabbing away at the stain on your clothes, and you should see the lip gloss gradually breaking up and wearing away.
What to Do If Your Clothes Were in the Dryer
You may have a bit more of a problem on your hands if you ended up putting a piece of clothing in the dryer before you noticed that there was lip gloss on it. Drying lip gloss tends to harden it, setting it into the fabric of your clothing. That makes it quite a bit harder to get out. But it’s not the end of the world.
Start off by cleaning out your dryer to ensure that subsequent batches of clothing don’t end up getting caked in lip gloss residue.
Once that’s done, go through all of the clothing that was in the previous batch and sort it into piles. One pile should have the clothes that have lip gloss on them while the other will have clean clothes.
While it may be a little harder to scrape the dried lip gloss off of your clothes, we’d recommend using the same approach that we outlined above to clean the clothes that were affected.
In most cases, the pre-detergent method works well, but you can also use the rubbing alcohol and ammonia techniques if it doesn’t work.
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