Shopping for foundation can be overwhelming. Especially if you’re alone in a drugstore, debating between two shades with no beauty expert to help you. I know this because it happened to me.
Instead of wasting my money on a potentially wrong foundation shade, I went home, did some research, and realized I was unprepared for my beauty haul. I needed to know the answer to this basic but surprisingly complicated question: what’s your undertone?
To help make things simple, there are a few self-evaluations you could make to determine your true undertone. Here’s how to find it.
How to Determine your Undertone: 4 Questions to Answer
There are three types: cool, neutral and warm. And the principles to figuring out your undertone apply to all skin tones (from very fair to dark).
What color are your veins?
When you examine the inside of your wrists, do your veins appear blue or green? If they look more blue/purple, you’re cool-toned. If they appear more green or olive, you’re warm-toned. Having trouble determining one or the other? Then you’re probably neutral.
Do you prefer silver or gold jewelry?
This is an easy one. Does silver jewelry flatter your skin tone more than gold? Or vice versa? If you look good in both, you’re neutral.
What colors do you look best in?
You might have already figured this out a long time ago. If you look best in jewel-tones such as blues, purples, and emerald-greens—you’re cool-toned. If you favor earth-tones like reds, oranges, yellows, and olive-greens, you’re warm toned. If you can rock every color under the sun then that means you’re neutral.
Other factors to determine your undertone:
Do you burn or tan easily? If you burn easily, you’re cool-toned. If you tan, you’re warm-toned. If you’re not sure, don’t stress—it’s not worth the sun burn to find out!
What if you don’t fall into any of these undertones types?
It’s very possible you don’t necessarily fall into the category of “neutral” if you have olive skin. It’s a wild card because it’s a combination of neutral with yellow and greenish undertones. I found this awesome Reddit thread, which compiles many factors into determining your undertone for olive skin and also includes swatches and product recommendations.
I hope you found this guide to determine your undertone helpful and I encourage you to save this cheat sheet above when shopping for beauty products that will complement your skin tone.
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Then there are olive undertones which are seldom mentioned in articles like these. Of you’re olive, it’s very hard to determine because no one talks about it. You read all these tips, they don’t fit and you have the hardest time finding a foundation match. Fyi there are olive foundations Koh gen Doh, Sishedo, and MUFE make some.
Thank you Staci for sharing. Good point. That’s an oversight on my part and I apologize for not including it in my post. Olive undertones are tricky because they are not neutral as most would assume. I read online to experiment with foundations with a hint of gold tones to warm up the “green” undertone. Thank you for sharing foundation brand suggestions!
Remember women with dark skin can be cool, warm and neutral toned but don’t “burn easily.”
Oh how clever!!
This was a great read and definitely has helped! I had no idea
xx
Thanks so much for reading!