A Word About Skintone

One of the most important, and often over-looked factors in selecting makeup, hair colour, and even clothing choices is your skin's natural undertone. I know better than anyone how hard it can be to look at yourself objectively, so I'm throwing together this resource for you.

I've got yellow undertones. This seems painfully obvious to me now, but it took years to figure out. In fact, I am so yellow that I find it very difficult to match my skin to most foundations. Chad has obvious pink undertones. Next to each other we look like a pig and an incredibly attractive girl with jaundice. Haha. I kid. But, note the difference. You would be inclined to think of pink as warm, and yellow as, well... warm. But in the world of skin and cosmetics, pink tones are considered cool. Some people are blessed with a neutral undertone, and almost anything will suit them. This isn't common, however, as even most neutrals lean to one side or another- and everyone has a colour they look awful in!

As a quick and general rule, the skin's undertone could be determined by the colour of your most visible veins. If they appear green than you're likely yellow (warm) toned. If the appear blue, then you're pink (cool.) A warm skintone usually looks best in warm colours, and so on with a cool tone.

But it's not quite so cut-and-dry.

Another recommended way to determine skin tone is to hold a piece of white paper up to the base of your neck, by your collarbone. Use the description below to decide which category you fit into. I always had trouble with this one, but it may work for you.

The four categories of skin tone:

• Golden
• Olive
• Pink
• Neutral

Golden skintones are warm. They against the white paper you should notice the skin to have a yellow, golden brown, or peachy hue. These skin tones are most flattered by browns, golds, yellow based greens, shades of grey, warm reds, oranges, apricot, peach, and corals.

Olive skintones are mostly cool, and can have tones of green, yellow, or gray. These tones can differ so I would recommend experimenting with both cool and warm tones to see which work best. Of course neutrals will work. Some materials state to avoid warm colours for an olive skin tone, but I tend to believe these tones are best played up in oranges, golden hues, apricots, corals, etc.

Pink skintones are tricky. You would expect someone with a pink or reddish tinge to be warm, but they are actually cool. That said, cool and neutral colours are the general consensus here. Warm colours can make you look downright red, which I have witnessed on Chad, who is very pink. Silvers are popular, as well as navy blue, amethyst, violet, magenta, icy blue's, silvery greens, and bright blue-based reds.

Neutral skintones are balanced. They're not overly cool or overly warm. These are your ivory or beige skin tones. They can wear just about anything. I wish there was more to say on this, but it's really all about figuring out what works specifically for you, and what may not.

Now you might have an idea of what category you fall into. Take into consideration your eye colour.

Warm Eye Colours:

• Red-browns or golden browns
• Green with red-brown, yellow-based green, green with gold flecks
• Blue with gold flecks.

Cool Eye Colours:

• Black brown or gray brown
• Blue, blue with gray, gray, or violet
• Green with blue or gray flecks.

By now, hopefully, you have a pretty good idea of your skin tone and some new ideas of colours to experiment with. Maybe something to keep in mind next time you go shopping for something new. I was going to elaborate, but I'm getting tired, so I'll slack off and leave you with these:

Left: Colours to best suit Cool tones.

Below: Colours best suited to Warm tones.

Final thought (I'm going all Springer on you!): Like anything in makeup, fashion, and art- There are no rules, only guidelines. I'm warm toned, but do you see purple on that chart? Hell no, and yet in my opinion and based on compliments I tend to receive when wearing purple, I'd say it's one of my best colours.

-H. Cat