How To Find Your Undertone to Color Match Your Foundation

With the advent of mineral based foundations, color matching is easier, as they tend to blend to your skin easier.  Still, determining what foundation color to purchase seems to be a mystery to so many.  So, here we go, some easy tricks to figure out what color of foundation you need.  By the way, if you'd rather watch a video than read this, here you go...

First, let's talk terms.  We constantly hear the terms Warm, Cool, and Neutral, as this is what many cosmetic companies use.  I personally prefer the terms Yellow, Pink (or Red), and Neutral.  It just makes more sense to me.  Need a translation between the two?  Your skin has a mix of Pink and Yellow pigments in it, at varying levels for different women. Warm just means you have more Yellow in your undertone of your skin, Cool means you have more Pink in your undertone, and Neutral means you have a closer to equal balance of the two.

How do you tell what undertone your skin has?  There are tests for that.  Lots of them.  Here are my 3 favorites.

• Start with some natural light (meaning outside, go get some Vitamin D). Hold a white paper up to your wrist.  What color are the veins in your wrist?  If they appear more green, you have a Yellow undertone.  If they appear more blue/purple, you have a Pink undertone.  And if you are having a hard time telling, you may be Neutral.
• What color jewelry looks best with your skin?  If you love that gold necklace against your chest, you may have more Yellow in your undertone.  Is silver jewelry more becoming on you?  You might have a Pink undertone.  And, if you rock both equally well, you're probably Neutral.
• How about when you're really soaking up the Vitamin D?  Does your skin tan easily and rarely burn?  You most likely have a Yellow undertone.  Do you burn like nobody's business and can't seem to get a tan for the life of you?  You've probably got a pink undertone (even without the pink sunburn).  Do you burn a little, but it turns into a tan really easily?  I bet you're neutral.

Great, now you know your undertone!  Be careful to not think that your overtone (say you have some ruddiness after washing your face) is your undertone.  That's not necessarily the case.  It's all about your undertone.  Also, I want to caution you not to try to cancel out your undertone by using a foundation that is the opposite. That's not how this works.  It just looks bad.  Match your undertone.

Most cosmetic companies have Yellow, Pink, and Neutral (Warm, Cool, and Neutral) foundations in varying shades of Light, Medium, Dark, and Deep.  Once you have your undertone nailed down, you can pretty easily determine which shade you need. Sometimes, if you tan during the summer, you might need to move up a shade (say from light to medium), but be careful doing that, you don't want those awful lines at your jaw.  The point here is always to match your skin.

As always, if you want to check out my favorite foundations (incidentally categorized as Yellow, Pink, and Neutral), click here.  If you need more help finding your color match, contact me at teampirateprincess@gmail.com.