Makeup based on skintone
Sunday, December 5th, 2010
How can you tell what your skin tone is? First, look in the mirror. Do you have naturally rosy cheeks? If so, your skin tone is pink based. Yellow or blue undertone is harder to tell. If the veins on your arm are green, you have yellow undertone. If they are blue, you have blue undertone. If you can’t tell if they are green or blue, just look in your closet to see what colors you gravitate towards. If you have mostly cool colors, you are most likely cool, and if you have mostly warm colors, you are most likely warm.
For some reason, we usually gravitate towards the same types of clothing colors as our skin tone. While this often creates a harmonious look, it does nothing to balance out the underlying skin tone. In the summer, when we have a little bit of a fresh skin color, it doesn’t really matter, but in the winter when the skin turns scary pale, and the sunlight against the snow is extremely harsh, we may need to balance out the underlying skin tone a bit.
Foundation is the easiest bit. It should have the same undertone as your skin – so warm to neutral foundation for warm skin, and cool to neutral for cool skin or pink skin. This is because foundation is only meant to even out your skin tone, and not to give you more color. Extra color should be added with blush and lipstick. But, how do your choose the right color?
If you pick a lipstick or liptint with the same undertone as your skin tone, it will look ok, but it won’t “boost” your skintone or balance your undertone. To do that, we have to use the color wheel and pick a color on the opposite side of the wheel. I’ll give you some examples.
One of my friends has very cool coloring. She has pale skin, almost white hair and loves to wear navy blue and icy pink lipstick with frosting. While this looks quite lovely, it magnifies her coolness and makes her look a bit like the snow queen. If we look at the other side of the color wheel, the opposite of blue is orange. What this means is that if you add a little bit of color with orange undertone, it will balance cool skin nicely. One day, I got her to try some peachy pink liptint instead of her icy cool pink, and it warmed up her whole face and gave her a very healthy glow. So, it doesn’t take much to make a difference.
Another cool colored friend of mine with golden blonde hair, loves to wear baby blue clothes, and a bright bluish red lipstick. This makes her look very cold and rigid, since the bluish red lipstick narrows her lips because the color is quite dark. A much better lip color for her would have been a more muted brick red, which would balance the blueness of her skin. I also saw her wearing an orange fleece one day, that someone had given her as a gift, and she looked gorgeous. She could also warm up her hair color with a slight tint of strawberry blonde, and it would really warm up her skin.
Personally, I have yellow based skin that looks very pale and sickly in the winter. Even though I feel attracted to yellow, mustard, olive and orange, it doesn’t really make me feel less pale in the winter. It looks harmonious, but not great. Brown, rust, brick and black looks much better on me, since it contains less yellow. But, if we look at the color chart, the opposite of yellow is purple, and since I am very pale and need a bit of warmth to my skin, a reddish purple would be more flattering than a bluish purple.
This explains why I look better in plum, brick and brown liptints, than in pink, coral or red. Pink is too blue for my skintone, and makes me look even more pale. Coral or bright red brings out the yellow in my skin more, while plum, balances out the yellow nicely and makes me look healthy despite being really pale. This also explains why I had to get rid of my golden blonde hair. It looked ok when I was younger, but when I hit menopause, the golden hair and the yellow based skin were magnifying a general “yellowness” that didn’t flatter in any way. It wasn’t until I changed it to a medium brown with strong red undertones, that it gave my pale skin a boost of warmness that I needed.
When it comes to eyemakeup, I tried the orange range that is supposed to be so very great for blue eyes, and I looked like I hadn’t slept for a week. It wasn’t until I switched to rich neutral browns, plums and burgundies that my blue eyes really “popped” – probably because it balanced the sickly looking yellow undertone of the skin. So, don’t pick eyemakeup based on your eyecolor – pick it based on your skintone instead. Balance out your skintone, and your eyes will “pop”!
What this means is orangey warm eyemakeup for blue skintone, purply eyemakeup for yellow skintone and blue/gray makeup for ruddy/pink skin. Try it, and you’ll be surprised how well it works!
Pink skin looks lovely and fresh on a young girl, but the older we get, the more the pinkness turns into ruddiness instead. If we look at the color chart, the opposite of red is green. Therefore, clothing in blues and greens will balance ruddy skin nicely (better to avoid pinks and berries!). People with pink/red skin actually look good in eyemakeup shades of gray/blue/green because it cools down the redness in their skin. Blush color should be icy cool pink with no orange in it, and lip color should also be icy cool in some kind of pink or berry color. Stay away from corals, browns and warm pinks or bright reds.
There is actually one more skintone, olive, which is basically yellowbased skin with a tan. It has a bit of an olive (green) tinge to it. As we already know, the opposite of green is red, so if you have olive skin, you can easily wear bright red, especially if it has a slight bluish undertone. People with olive skin can even get away with wearing bright red lipstick in the daytime without looking overdone! Eyemakeup colors should be brown, gold and olive, since they already have a tan and don’t need to boost their color. Blush can be plum, brown or quite red and still look good.
This should give you a good idea how to look really gorgeous for Christmas!