Sephora Virtual Artist Australia is the best thing to happen to lipstick lovers

The new way to try before you buy.

Have you ever desperately coveted a perfectly stunning lipstick shade, bought it online and when it arrived found that it absolutely doesn't work on your skin tone? Yeah, me too.

As a girl with a rich olive skin tone and rather pigmented lips it's hard to gauge what will work on me, since most of the lipstick models out there are fairer than me and have naturally pinkie-beige-toned lips. Too many times to count, I have invested in a classic beige shade, only to find that it looks almost purple on me because of my colouring.

Thankfully Sephora has come up with a solution to this problem. It's called Virtual Artist. You may have already heard about it since the lucky ladies in the US have had the Virtual Artist app and online site since the beginning of the year. In case you're not yet acquainted with Virtual Artist, it's a tool that allows you to virtually try on lipstick shades stocked at Sephora.

The Australian version of the site went live last week and includes the lipstick shades available at the Australian Sephora stores. To start Visual Artist, you can either use your webcam to capture yourself on video or you can just upload a selfie, then facial recognition software will map out the location of your lips. Once you've confirmed the location of your lips, you can then start to try on different shades.

Divided into categories, Red, Pink, Berry, Coral, Nude, Universal and Unconventional, you can easily filter through and find your perfect colour. You can also filter by brand, by lip gloss or lipstick or just search for the name of the product you want to try.

The best thing about this tool is that it takes into account the opacity of each shade. Some of the lipsticks like the Kat Von D Studded Kiss colours and the Marc Jacobs Beauty lipsticks are ever so slightly sheer and let the natural colour of your lips shine through. Visual Artist accounts for this and gives a pretty damn accurate representation of what these colours will look like in real life.

To help you choose and compare, Virtual Artist allows you to side-by-side compare the appearance of up to four shades so you can work out what looks best. What a great tool!

Previously, I've kept my online lipstick purchases to the Charlotte Tilbury website because each shade is shown on up to six different models of varied skin tones. It's the only way I've been able to successfully buy lipsticks online that actually suit me! But the Visual Artist application changes that. If you're having trouble finding a lipstick to compliment your skin tone, this Visual Artist is absolutely the solution you've been looking for.