What are skin undertones?
As celebrity makeup artist and Tatcha global director of artistry and education Daniel Martin explains, your skin undertone is the color underneath the surface of your skin tone. Where your skin tone is the surface color (which is usually categorized as fair, light, medium, tan, deep, or dark) that can shift due to a different number of things such as sun exposure, tanning, hyperpigmentation, or redness, your undertone tends to stay a consistent shade. “It’s really what determines how a makeup shade is going to look on you,” says Martin.
“[Skin undertones] influence whether your skin reads as warm, cool, neutral, or olive, even as your surface color shifts,” adds J. Brandon Correa, celebrity and YSL Beauty national makeup artist. “[It] is not the same as how light or deep your skin is; people of any skin depth like fair, medium, tan, deep, or very deep can have warm, cool, neutral, or olive undertones.”
Correa goes on to explain that you can sit somewhere between undertone categories as skin tone and undertones are incredibly nuanced. “I always remind people that undertones are not rigid boxes,” he says. But in general, the most common undertone shades are:
Cool Undertones
Both Martin and Correa say that cool undertones carry hints of pink, red, and rosy tones underneath. They can also lean blue.
Warm Undertones
Warm undertones, they say, are more yellow, peach, or golden. Martin adds that it can be orange beneath the surface too.
Neutral Undertones
“Neutral undertones have a balance of warm and cool characteristics,” says Correa. “Meaning the skin does not pull strongly in either direction.” Martin agrees and adds to think of it this way: nothing reads strongly pink or golden.
Olive Undertones
Martin says that olive undertones carry a subtle green, gray-green, or yellow-green cast that can show up at any depth, light to deep. “Olive is a little more nuanced,” Correa agrees. “Someone with an olive undertone may also lean warmer or cooler, which is why olive complexion can sometimes be tricky to shade match.
How to Determine Your Skin Undertone
There are a couple of ways you can figure out what your undertone is on your own. Martin first recommends the jewelry test where you hold up gold and silver jewelry to your skin to see which one is more flattering (“It’s my go-to way to determine undertones,” he adds). “If silver is more flattering you’re likely cool [undertone]. If gold looks better, you’re probably warm. If both work equally well, you’re likely neutral. If other metals like rose gold, antique gold, or mixed metals look best, you may be leaning olive or neutral,” he says.
