RESUMO
AIM: To assess the degree of aesthetic perception of the height of the vermilion border of the lip among laypeople of black and white ethnicity. MATERIAL AND METHODS: in possession of an extraoral photograph of a 25 years old woman with lips at rest, changes were effectuated reducing the height of the lip vermilion in increments of 0.5 mm (0-default to -3.0 mm). To do so, a program for image manipulation (Adobe Photoshop CS4, San Jose, CA, USA) was used. Once the images obtained, they were printed and arranged randomly on a questionnaire to be evaluated by the examiners (n=200). A graduated visual analogue scale of 0 to 10 points for aesthetic evaluation, where 0 represented "not very attractive", 5 "attractive" and 10 "very attractive", was used. To evaluate the differences between the examiners, the Mann-Whitney test was used. RESULTS: There was significant difference between male and female evaluators in evaluating the effect of the height of the vermilion on the attractiveness of the lip. Black and white people were able to identify changes in the height of the vermilion border of the lip, verifying that this height is acceptable till -2mm. Black evaluators gave lower scores to the -3 mm height vermilion than white evaluators, and this has been a clinically significant difference (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: changes in the height of the vermilion border of the lip are acceptable up to -2mm gap among black and white people of both genders, gradually decaying to major changes and having a preference, mostly, for the greater height of the vermilion border of the lip.