Your skin tone is the reason some foundations make you look like a goddess while others give you a chalky white pallor. This also extends to lipsticks and eyeshadow. Here’s how you can find out your true skin color.
To know your true skin color, you must first understand the undertone of your skin. The undertone of your skin is key to selecting the correct shades of makeup and creating a flawless look. Skin tone is basically determined by the amount of melanin or pigment present in your skin. The top layer of your skin may get darker or lighter depending on your exposure to the sun, but your undertone remains constant. Here are a few tricks that you can use to find out your skin tone.
Start with the Surface Colour
The surface color of your skin and the undertones are the two vital elements to determine the skin tone. The surface color is what we see first when we look in the mirror. The surface color is light, medium, or dark, for instance. This is basically all about how much pigmentation you have in your skin.
Fair – Very fair, and burn easily.
Light – Shiny skin, but have more yellow or beige undertones than fair skin.
Medium – Your skin is a more medium color, with potential olive undertones.
Dark – Dark skin and/or a deep complexion.
Your surface color can change depending on a lot of factors. Getting tanned in the summer, for instance, will lead to darker skin, and it gets lighter again in the winter. It can equally be affected by redness, rosacea, hyperpigmentation, dryness, and dullness.
What is an Undertone?
“Undertone” is the term used chiefly for that subtle, more muted color that lies underneath your skin. You can call it a “shadow” that is always there. While the surface color may change, the undertone stays the same, regardless.
Undertone should be primarily used to form the basis of your overall skin tone. In fact, most beauty experts recommend using the undertone, rather than your surface color, to determine which foundation is best. It’s important to understand that these two colors can be different. The surface color of the skin may appear reddish, whereas the undertone may be golden or yellow.
In general, we have three undertone categories:
- Warm – yellow, peach, and golden.
- Cool – red, pink.
- Neutral – olive or a mix of those above.
So how do you go about determining your skin tone?
Skin tone can be determined using various methods. Some of them are listed below:
- Check the veins
Look at the underside of your wrist. What color are your veins? Bluish-purple means you’re on the cool side. Greenish means warm. If you’re not sure and your veins look bluish-green, you may be neutral.
- Do you tan or burn?
Those who turn into bronze goddesses in the sun are usually warm-toned, while those that get red instead are usually cool. Even cools get tanned; they have to be a little more cautious with their exposure.
- What colors look good on you?
Cool tones look good in deep, vibrant colors, such as blue, purple, and emerald-green. Warm tones glow in earth tones such as red, orange, yellow, and olive-green. If you can wear both shades, you have neutral undertones
- Try the white test.
Get a plain piece of white paper and put it on your face, sans makeup. Does your complexion look dull, or good? If your skin appears yellowish or sallow beside the white paper, you have a warm skin tone, if your skin appears pink, rosy, or blueish-red, then you have a cool skin tone, if your skin appears gray, your skin probably has an olive complexion with a neutral undertone and If there is not much difference, you’re neutral.
Undertone also helps in choosing the right kind of blush, shadow, lipstick, highlight, and contour shades that will be the most flattering to your skin. So hey, get to know your skin tone before you spend your savings on that gorgeous shade of lipstick!