Understand Your Skin tone and Undertone

Understand Your Skin tone and Undertone

When it comes to beauty and fashion, understanding your skin tone is a fundamental step in selecting colors and products that enhance your natural features. Skin tone refers to the natural color of your skin, which is determined by undertones—subtle hues beneath the surface. These undertones play a major role in determining which colors of clothing, makeup, and accessories will best complement your complexion. Here's how to identify your skin tone and make it work for you.

1. What Are Skin Tones and Undertones?
Skin tone can be described as the general color of your skin-whether it is fair or dark. However, when it comes to undertones, it refers to very subtle colors that lie beneath, which can affect how your skin tone appears. Undertones are divided into warm, cool, and neutral categories.

Warm Undertones: These are usually yellow, peach, or golden tones that make your skin look sun kissed. Individuals with warm suggestions will quite often be more appealing in natural tones and rich, warm colors

Cool Undertones: These have a bluish, pink, or purple base, which can give the skin a porcelain or rosy appearance. Cool-toned individuals shine in cool colors, such as blue, green, and silver.

Neutral Undertones: These have both warm and cool undertones and where neither really stands out. Such individuals with neutral undertones can carry a variety of warm as well as cool colors.

2. Most effective method to recognize to complexion and under tone
In order to identify your skin tone and undertone, here are the ways to do so,

A. The Vein Test
Warm Undertones: If your veins on the inside of your wrist look greenish, then you have warm undertones.
Cool Undertones:  If your veins look blueish or purplish, you fall into the cool undertone category.
Neutral Undertones: If your veins do not look specifically green but neither blue, then you probably have neutral undertones.

B. The Jewelry Test
Warm Undertones: Gold jewelry tends to look better on people who have warm undertones.
Cool Undertones: Generally, people with cool undertones get on well with silver jewelry.
Neutral Undertones: People with neutral undertones get similarly well with both gold and silver jewelry.

C. The Sun Exposure Test
Warm Undertones: Individuals with warm undertones generally tend to tan easily with sun exposure. Thus, their skin is golden or olive after sun exposure.
Cool Undertones: Those having cool undertones tend to burn more easily and have the possibility of having fair skins that turn pinkish as soon as they get out under the sun.
Neutral Undertones: People who have neutral undertones react relatively well to the sun, tanning a little but also burning a little.

D. The White Shirt Test
Hold a white shirt or a piece of white paper near your face or close to neck and chest, in natural lighting and see how your skin looks.

If your skin looks yellow or golden next to the white shirt, you likely have warm undertones.
If it makes your skin look reddish or pinkish, you have a cool undertone.
If your skin looks neither yellow nor pinkish, you may have neutral undertones.

3. Identifying Your Skin Tone

Once you know your undertones, it is easier to determine your skin tone: fair, medium, olive, or dark. While skin tones are different, the important thing is to know which colors complement your complexion.


Fair skin is characterized with lighter skin, often burning out easily. There are a few colors that could have pink undertones, while there are more that would be peach-like. Those cool-toned fair skins look like pure porcelain, whereas warm-tinted individuals look slightly light golden.

Medium or Olive Skin Tone: Medium skin tends to have a tan or light brown appearance and may have yellow or greenish undertones. Olive skin has a greenish or golden undertone that complements earth tones and rich colors.

Dark skin tone: dark shades from deep brown to pure black. They are often warmer or nearly neutral undertones. Occasionally cool undertones can exist with a dark skin tone. Jewel tones and highly saturated colors pop against the deeper skin tones.

4. Why Know Your Skin Tone Matters
A. Fashion Choices
Whenever you are wearing colors that complement your undertones, you can create more harmonious and even flattering outfits. For example, warm-toned individuals look amazing in earthy tones like brown, orange, and gold, and cool-toned individuals can shine in jewel tones as well as cool shades of blue and purple.

B. Makeup
Choosing makeup according to your undertone ensures that products will be blended naturally with your complexion. To choose the right foundation shade, you need to know if your skin has warm undertones, cool undertones, or neutral undertones. Similarly, choosing blush, eyeshadow, and lipstick can help match your natural colors and give you the best features.

C. Hair Color
Hair color also looks better when it complements your skin tone. Warm undertones tend to look great with golden blonde, auburn, and rich browns, while cool undertones suit platinum blonde, ashy brown, or black hair shades. Neutral undertones have the flexibility to experiment with both cool and warm hair colors.

5. How to Dress for Your Skin Tone
Now that you know what your undertones are, you can start curating your wardrobe to flatter your complexion. Here is the general guideline for both types of undertones.

Warm Undertones:  Should choose colors such as coral, gold, warm reds, olive green, brown, and mustard. Avoid those cool colors like icy blue or purple.

Cool undertones: Choose jewel tones like emerald, sapphire, and amethyst, icy shades, cool blues, and purples. Orange, brown, and yellow might be too warm for your skin.

Neutral undertones: You can wear a lot of colors, but you need to balance them. Try muted tones, both warm and cool, like teal, jade, blush pink, and lavender. Neutral undertones go well with classic black, white, and gray