How do I Determine my Skin Undertones?

Determining your skin undertones can help you make most flattering choices for your hair color, makeup, and clothes. People generally have warm, cool, or neutral undertones. There are a few different methods you can use to see which type you have, with the most common ones being looking at your veins and your natural hair and eye color and seeing what your skin looks like next to gold or silver jewelry or a white cloth. If you're stuck after trying these methods, you can try getting professional help.

One of the most common ways of determining your skin undertones is by looking at the veins on the underside of your forearm in natural sunlight. If they look bluish, then you have a cool skin tone, and if they look more green or yellow then you have warm skin. If they are a mix, or you can't really tell, then you probably have neutral skin.

Looking at your natural eye and hair colors can also help you figure out your coloring. Typically, cool people have eyes that are blue, gray, or green and have blond, brown, or black hair with blue, silver, violet and ash undertones. By contrast, warm people usually have amber, hazel, brown, or black eyes with strawberry blond, red, brown, or black hair. Their hair tends to have gold, red, orange, or yellow undertones.

You can also try using jewelry to see whether your skin is warm, cool, or neutral. If you look better wearing silver, white gold, and platinum, you probably have cool skin, but if you look better with yellow gold, then you're probably have a warm skin tone. The metal that works with your skin undertones will complement your skin and make you look fresh. If you look equally good with both, then you have a neutral skin tone.

A fourth way of determining skin undertones is to pull your hair back and put a white cloth like a towel or T-shirt around your neck and shoulders. If your face looks blue or pink, you have cool skin. If your face looks yellowish or peachy, you have warm skin. Neutral skinned people normally look greenish next to the white cloth.

If you still can't really tell what type of skin you have or you want to learn more about what colors of makeup and clothing look best on you, you may want to attend a color class or make an appointment with a stylist. Usually, cool-toned people are advised to wear jewel tones, pinks, blues, and pure white. Warm-toned people typically look better in earthy tones, such as orange, green, yellow, red, and brown.

A stylist may also categorize you using the seasonal color method. In this system, people are generally divided in spring, summer, autumn, and winter types, with each category further breaking down into things like clear, light, soft, and hard depending on your skin color, variations in your skin undertones, and the saturation of your hair and eye color. For instance, a person could be a clear, cool, light summer, in which case he or she would look best in light, but warm colors like coral and khaki.

Wearing the most flattering colors can help you to look your best overall and make you look more vibrant. They can, for example, make your eyes to really stand out and give your skin a healthy glow, rather than looking tired or washed out. Regardless of your skin undertones though, some colors may just not look good on you. This sometimes happens when people have colors or features that overlap various categories.

If you have a color that you love, but find that it is not flattering, you still may be able to find ways to wear it, as long as you try to not wear it above your waist and definitely not near your face. Slight variations of certain colors can also work. For instance, if you have soft but warm coloring, you may not look good in a stark white shirt, but a soft ivory one might work very well.