People may be dialing it back on lip filler — there was a 57% increase in filler reversals between 2020 and 2021 — but they do still want the look of fuller lips. “Patients are definitely still interested in lip rejuvenation, just not full-on augmentation," says Mona Gohara, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in Hamden, Connecticut. "They don’t want to look like a Real Housewife.”
Good timing for the founders of Droplette: Their 17-Volt Lip Plumper claims to make lips look fuller without the need for the usual party tricks such as tingly plumping glosses, extreme lip-lining techniques, or costly injections. Droplette's lip-plumping formula is something you spray on your lips, and it's the newest addition to Droplette's line.
The 17-Volt Lip Plumper, a skin-care device that looks a bit like a really chic egg, dispenses serums as gentle mists made up of large molecules “packaged” into thousands of microscopic droplets. These are intended to penetrate deeper into the skin — in this case, on the lips — than typical serums you'd smooth on with your fingers.
Using Droplette's spray-on technology to treat lips to a cloud of plumping serum has the experts we speak with feeling very excited: “This is the first totally new lip-plumping product I've seen in years. It’s innovative,” says Los Angeles-based makeup artist Robin Black.
We put the device to the test on four different editors to see if it really delivers fuller lips. Here's what we found.
Overview: The Droplette 17-Volt Lip Plumper
Collagen. Glycerin. Hyaluronic Acid. The ingredients in the 17-Volt Lip Plumper treatment may not be novel, but the application sure is. First, you’ll need the Droplette device, which costs $200 and is about the size of an avocado, to disperse the formula in a light mist and the Droplette app which connects to the device via bluetooth. "This [the app"] increases the delivery power and is what enables the Lip Plumper to be most effective," says Droplette cofounder Rathi Srinivas. The device comes with a charging cord and dock, and can also be used with the brand’s various skin-care formulas, including Glycolic Illuminator, Tranexamic Eraser, and Retinol Renewer. The 17-Volt Plumper capsules start at $60 for a box of 14.
As with any of Droplette's formulas, you insert a thimble-size capsule full of the treatment, in this case for lips, into the device. Turn it on, hear the buzzing, and the device begins to gently spray the treatment, which you aim directly over your lips for 30 seconds (the brand recommends 15 seconds for each lip).
Each capsule contains glycerin, marine collagen, and hyaluronic acid; that last one, says Dr. Gohara, is the major player in the formula. “Hyaluronic acid is a potent humectant that helps to absorb water from the ambient environment to enhance and plump,” she explains.
In product testing done by Droplette, subjects had up to 40% fuller-looking lips immediately after use and those plumping results lasted up to six hours. According to Madhavi Gavini, CEO and cofounder of Droplette, the benefits were cumulative: The baseline surface area of lips displayed a 30% increase — as long as participants continued to use the device once a day — over a 14-day period.
“Even when using an injectable hyaluronic acid, it requires, at the minimum, half a syringe to note a difference to this degree," says Dr. Gohara. "A topical product would have to be supercharged and scientifically very unique to create these same results.”
The technology behind the product:
Gavini was working as a therapeutic drug designer when she attended a conference and heard about a rare pediatric dermal disease that was tricky to treat. Researchers were struggling to effectively deliver the necessary drugs to the affected areas of the skin. So, Gavini rolled up her sleeves and grabbed her colleague Srinivas, a chemical engineer and medical diagnostics developer, and now the CTO and cofounder of Droplette, to build a solution.
Gavini describes the result of their collaboration as “a transdermal drug delivery system that could get large therapeutics into the skin in a way that wouldn't hurt.” She and Srinivas looked, initially, to needle-free jet injections, which use a high-pressure stream of fluid to deliver drugs into the bloodstream. “But we didn’t want anything to get in the bloodstream, we just wanted it to get into the skin," notes Gavini. "So instead of a jet, we thought, What if we have a spray with tiny droplets [of liquid] to get [hard-to-deliver] ingredients gently into the skin?”
They named the device Droplette, secured funding from NASA and the Department of Defense, and worked with Tufts Medical Center in Boston to develop it. They also realized — after talking to family, friends, and we assume some Allure readers — that the same elements that make the device effective for drugs could make it effective for over-the-counter products like a glycolic acid, retinol serum, or perhaps a lip plumper.
When we sent the Droplette to cosmetic chemist Perry Romanowski, he described it as “a Keurig for skin," adding, "I've never seen a product like this before.” After you insert a capsule into the device, an atomizer turns the serum inside into a suspension of tiny particle droplets, which are delivered as a gentle mist.
The idea is that smaller particles, misted onto skin, may penetrate deeper than a traditional serum or cream: “Much of the published delivery data [on Droplette] is actually with much larger molecules relative to what we [at Droplette] deliver in skin care,” explains Srinivas. For example, molecules larger than 500 daltons cannot pass through the skin barrier. But in a study published in the journal Pharmaceutics, Droplette delivered two antibiotics over 1,000 daltons in molecular weight several skin layers deep.
The data shows that the Droplette 17-Volt Lip Plumper “gives a transient plump that’s more noticeable than [you'd expect from] a topical,” says Dr. Gohara. And that’s something Black tells us she experienced firsthand: “It’s definitely more effective than any plumping gloss I’ve tried, with the exception of the Forget the Filler lip gloss, which I tried the month after I tested the 17-Volt.”
Romanowski, on the other hand, has found it to be on par with plumping glosses, but says his lips feel better afterward than they do with a gloss: “It left my lips softer and more supple."
So, what do Allure editors think? We tried the device, along with its accompanying app (which puts the Droplette in lip plumping mode), on four of us.
Allure reviews:
“I was really excited to try the Droplette,” says Calaor. “A device that promises pillowy lips without the pain of an injection or the spiciness of a traditional lip plumper sounds like a dream come true. It takes about a minute to use, and creates a tingling sensation during application and shortly after it shuts off. My lips don't look that different afterward. (My top lip appears ever-so-slightly plumper.) But they feel supersoft and hydrated — the way they would if I rubbed on a really great, non-sticky balm.”
“My lips can perhaps be best described as unassuming,” Bailly says. “There's just not much there. So I was hopeful that Droplette could at least offer me a few hours of increased surface area for testing a group of brightly colored Best of Beauty lipstick finalists. It takes a couple of attempts to feel comfortable holding this palm-size pod about half an inch above my lips, per the directions. After connecting the device to the app and with one push of the button, you get two 15-second spray sessions with a 5-second break in between. Afterward, my lips feel very soft and dewy. But when I nestle the device back in its cradle and turn to the mirror, I see no more plumpness than I would after massaging in my favorite lip balm. (I'm currently enjoying Glow Recipe Plum Plump Hyaluronic Gloss Balm.)”
“I rarely use lip-plumping glosses so I didn’t have much of a reference point to compare the Droplette 17-Volt Lip Plumper,” Blay says. I downloaded the app, connected the device, and toggled on the Lip Plumper setting. “Even after I misted my lips with Droplette twice I didn't see much difference in their shape or plumpness. I did notice a slight tingling sensation shortly after misting my lips. However, my lips are already pretty full naturally, so that could be why the plumper falls a bit flat for me.”
“Like many of my Allure coworkers, I fall at the intersection of “beauty fan” and “tech fan,” so I love anything that hits both of those interests,” Escobar says. “I’ve also had lip fillers five or six times, so a little gadget like the Droplette that promises lip-plumping powers naturally piques my interest. While the instructions initially confuse me a bit — I just don’t find it as intuitive as other beauty devices I’ve used — it is fairly simple once I figure it out.”
Escobar continues, “The results are okay, albeit underwhelming: I like that my lips feel softer after using it, but don’t feel that the difference between my before-and-after photos is noticeable enough to justify the high price tag. That said, if you have realistic expectations and simply want soft, moisturized lips, it may be worth trying.”
Pricing and value
Based on the experiences of our editors, the Droplette 17-Volt Lip Plumper just doesn't deliver the kind of plumping we were hoping for. If you already own a Droplette (a $200 device), trying the 17-Volt Lip Plumper Capsules will run about $4 per application. If your results are anything like ours, your lips will be smoother and more hydrated afterwards, but you may not see a very noticeable difference in fullness.
Where to buy it
You can purchase the Droplette on the brand’s web site and its authorized Amazon store.
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