Lipstick Shade Translator
Find your lipstick equivalent across brands.
Pick a cult shade to find drugstore equivalents
Or pick from the full list →
What this does
You found The Lipstick. Then it got discontinued, or you ran out on holiday, or you just want a cheaper backup for everyday. Lipstick is the most "I want THAT one but cheaper" category in beauty, and the answers are scattered across Reddit threads, dupe blogs, and YouTube comparison videos. The Lipstick Shade Translator centralizes it: pick the lipstick you already own, see ranked equivalents across drugstore and luxury brands.
We focus on the cult shades first — Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk, MAC Ruby Woo, NARS Dolce Vita, Maybelline Touch of Spice — and expand from there. Each match is scored on color match, finish (matte / satin / gloss), and longevity.
What you'll get
- Your shade matched across major lipstick brands
- Finish + longevity comparison on every match
- Drugstore equivalents flagged explicitly
- Reviewer notes when the dupe is well-documented
Try it with
- Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk
- MAC Ruby Woo
- NARS Dolce Vita
How to match a lipstick shade across brands
Lipstick matching is easier than foundation in one way and harder in another. Easier, because you are matching a colour rather than a colour-plus-skin interaction, so a swatch comparison carries most of the information. Harder, because finish changes perceived colour far more dramatically than it does in foundation — the same pigment reads as three different shades in a matte, a satin, and a gloss.
Match in this order: undertone family (blue-red, orange-red, brown-nude, pink-nude, berry), then depth, then finish. Getting the undertone family right matters more than getting the exact hue, because a blue-red and an orange-red at identical depth look nothing alike on the lip and suit different complexions.
Why the same shade name means different colours
Shade names in lipstick are marketing, not description. "Nude" spans everything from pale beige to deep brown depending on the brand's intended customer. "Rose" covers cool pinks and warm mauves. Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk and a drugstore "pillow talk dupe" are frequently not the same colour family at all — they are the same *idea*, a my-lips-but-better pinky nude, calibrated to different skin.
This is why matching by name fails and matching by pigment description works. Every entry here is mapped from swatch comparison rather than name similarity, which is also why some famous "dupes" are marked as loose matches instead of exact ones.
Finish conversions: matte, satin, cream, and gloss
A matte finish absorbs light, which deepens and flattens the colour — mattes read about half a shade darker and noticeably more saturated than the same pigment in a cream. Satins and creams reflect some light and read truest to the swatch. Glosses sheer the pigment out and read lighter and warmer.
So when converting across finishes, adjust: going from a cream to a matte, pick a shade one step lighter than the literal match; going from a matte to a gloss, pick one step deeper. Converting within the same finish needs no adjustment, which is why the matches here note finish explicitly.
Popular lipstick shade conversions
Every shade below has its own page with the full cross-brand match table, undertone notes, and confidence levels.
FAQ
How are dupes selected?
Each dupe is scored on three axes: color match (the most important), finish match, and longevity. We only show matches that score reasonably on color.
What about lip liners and glosses?
Launch is focused on lipsticks. Liners and glosses are a likely v2.
From the team behind AllerNote
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