How to Identify Your Skin Undertone

Look at Your Veins

Look at the veins on your wrist. If they are blue, you have cooler undertones, if they are green; you have warmer undertones.

If they are both blue and green, you’re a lucky neutral who can get away with pretty much any colours.

Jewellery

This may seem a bit odd to some, but allot of people prefer gold or silver due to the way it looks on the skin.

Gold jewellery tends to look nicer on warmer skin tones. Silver, platinum and rose gold tends to be more flattering on cool skin tones.

If you think both look good on you, you may have a neutral skin tone.

The Paper Method

Wash your face and wait 30 mins.

Hold a white piece of paper up to your face.

Looking in a mirror, see how your skin looks in contrast to the white paper. It may appear to have a yellow cast, a blue-red or rosey cast. It may not appear to be either... but maybe a gray color instead. What color does you skin appear next to the side of the paper?

If it's a yellowish or sallow beside the white paper: you have a warm skin tone.

Cool tones will look pink, rosy, or blueish-red.

If you see a grey colour, your skin may have an olive complexion with a neutral undertone. The green from your complexion and the yellowish undertone combines to create this effect. You can experiment with neutral and warm tones, since you fall somewhere in between.

If you can't determine any cast of yellow, olive, or pink, you have a neutral skin tone.

Freckles

Do you tan easily? Do you burn or get freckles?

The amount of melanin in your skin determines how it reacts to sun exposure and can help you determine your skin tone.

If you tan easily and rarely burn, you have more melanin in your skin and you most likely have a warm or neutral skin tone.

If your skin burns and doesn't tan, you have less melanin and so you probably have a cooler skin tone.

Although this is true for most people, some people with very dark, ebony skin may not burn easily but still have a cool skin tone.

There are a few more ways of determining what your undertones are, but we think these are the best ones as they're pretty easy to do by yourself. If you still aren't sure, we can help. Just book a free consultation and we'd be happy to have a look.