Beauty 101: What's Your Undertone?

Beauty 101: What's Your Undertone?

I get asked this question a lot, because I think people are sort of confused when it comes to their own faces. We can identify someone else's features from 10 miles away, but when it comes to our own skin- it's like we've never looked at a human before.

So let's break this down a little:

Why is knowing your skin's tone important?

EVERYTHING you do in beauty plays off of your skins natural coloring. When you look at a girl's hair color and you feel like something is "off", that's usually because the hair color is clashing against skin color.

This is why a lot of people can't pull of certain types of blondes and reds.

Makeup especially makes a difference when you know your coloring. Ever tried on a foundation from the drugstore only to find it made you look yellow and sallow? As in, by the end of blending you looked sickly?

That's because it's too yellow, or warm for you. It's camouflaging your color completely rather than enhancing your beauty.

So how do I know if I'm warm or cool?

50% of the time, people seem to know instinctually. 

Do you look good with icy blonde highlights, or warm buttery blonde highlights? Do you naturally wear more gold jewelry or silver jewelry? How do you feel wearing an orange or yellow shirt as opposed to a blue or purple shirt?

Cliff notes version: If you answered icy, silver, and blue and purple- you're cool. Everything else is warm. If you don't know, you might actually be neutral.

Neutral is an option?

It is. Not everyone falls magically under one category or another- and may actually be the reason why you're having so much confusion. No one ever bothers to tell you that could be it. (Such is the case with me, thinking for 20 years I was cool toned and hating every pink-looking foundation I ever put on.)

So here's how to figure it out:

Do your best to stand in front of something white- like a white wall, and wrap your hair in a white towel. Ideally be wearing white as well- all of this makes a blank canvas. Take off your makeup, all of it. Having on a foundation in the wrong color tone is going to throw everything off.

A simple trick is to hold up a t-shirt with blues or purples and see how your face looks. Do you look brighter? Better?

Now hold up the yellow or orange shirt- Are you bright? Does your skin look better?

Try the gold or silver jewelry now and see how it looks.

Did one look better?

Another question to ask yourself is what happens when you go outside- Are you prone to sunburns or do you tan like a golden Christmas goose? (Side note, if you tan, I'm jealous.)

The easiest way to tell what coloring you are (this is assuming you aren't color blind) is to check your palms and wrists.

Look at your palms. Does your skin look red/pink or peachy?

Now look at your wrists- Do your veins look blue or green?

If you're red/pink and blue- you're cool.

If you're peachy and green- you're warm.

And if you're like me and you have one of each- you're neutral.

Did you discover something about yourself today? Or did you confirm what you already know and feel legit smart?

Ok, yeah, so what do I do with this information now?

GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND FINALLY HAVE THE MAKEUP AND HAIR YOU WANT.

If you're unsure where to go from here, here's a cheat sheet:

If you're cool toned: Play around with anything on the left side of this color wheel.

Warm tones: Stay on the right.

Neutral: Whatever, you can pretty much do whatever you want for the most part.

But don't feel like this is a life sentence. If you're cool toned and want to wear orange, then do it! Just find an orange that's more of a pink-based color- like salmon or coral. 

Warm and want to wear purple? Do it, try experimenting with red-violets like magenta.

Here's some tips and trips for when it comes to makeup and skin color:

The foundations in the drugstore are primarily yellow based. (Unless stated otherwise on the bottle).

This is so that they cover a majority of consumers, and you should try to find colors that say things like "pink ivory" or something like that to find something cooler- or stick with companies who offer their foundations in warm, neutral, and pink.

Brown eye shadow isn't automatically neutral. There are red browns, cool browns, light browns, orange browns and everything in between. 

Check out these swatches of MakeupGeek eyeshadows. Look at the difference between Mocha and Cocoa Bear. That's a HUGE difference. Cocoa Bear is insanely more red based, while Mocha has a rich blue.

Mocha would have a more soothing effect on blue eyes, while Cocoa Bear makes blue eyes look bluer- so the effect is much different.

If you ever want to see the read difference between blues and yellows- go through and swatch red lipsticks on white paper. You'd be amazed how different they look from each other.

And in terms of hair color- just understand the difference between having warmth vs cool-ness.

If you're a tanned beauty, you can get away with a "brassier" blonde- head into the zone of caramels or buttery blondes- it'll actually enhance your tan and look very real. Whereas if you go with icy platinum or cool blondes, it looks incredibly unrealistic.

Hope this beauty 101 helps, and if nothing else, at least you know where to go for foundations now,

-SamanthaK