How to Find Your Skin Undertone: 6 Easy Tests

Your undertone is the quiet color underneath the surface of your skin. It doesn't change when you tan or blush, and it's the single most useful thing to know when choosing clothes, foundation and hair color.

There are three types:

• Warm: golden, peachy or yellow.
• Cool: pink, rosy or bluish.
• Neutral: a mix of both, or hard to call either way.

Undertone is different from skin tone. Skin tone is how light or deep your skin is. Someone with very fair skin can be warm, and someone with deep skin can be cool.

Before you start

Do every test in daylight, ideally near a window, with clean skin and no makeup. Indoor bulbs are often yellow or blue and will push the result one way. Look at several tests together rather than trusting just one.

1. The vein test

Look at the veins on the inside of your wrist.

• Mostly green: likely warm.
• Mostly blue or purple: likely cool.
• A mix, or hard to tell: likely neutral.

It's the most famous test, but it's also the least reliable on its own, so use it as a first hint.

2. The white paper test

Hold a sheet of plain white paper next to your bare face and look in the mirror.

• Your skin looks yellow or golden next to it: warm.
• Your skin looks pink or rosy: cool.
• Neither stands out: neutral.

3. The gold and silver test

Hold a gold piece of jewelry and a silver one near your face, one at a time.

• Gold makes your skin look brighter and healthier: warm.
• Silver looks better and gold looks brassy: cool.
• Both look fine: neutral.

4. The white versus cream test

Compare a pure white top with a cream or ivory one.

• Cream looks softer and kinder: warm.
• Pure white looks crisp and clean, cream looks dull: cool.

5. The sun test

How does your skin react to the sun without sunscreen?

• Tans easily to a golden brown: often warm.
• Burns, turns pink and tans slowly, if at all: often cool.

This one is only a hint, because how easily you tan is mostly about how much melanin your skin makes, not your undertone.

6. The color test

Hold two tops or scarves under your face, one warm and one cool: for example a tomato red and a raspberry red, or an olive green and an emerald.

• Warm colors make you look healthy and the cool ones make you look grey: warm.
• Cool colors brighten you and warm ones make you look sallow: cool.

Mistakes that fool most people

• Redness isn't the same as cool. Rosacea, acne or sensitive skin can look pink even on a warm undertone. Look at areas without redness, like under the jaw.
• Olive skin is tricky. Olive skin has a green-grey cast and is often mistaken for cool or warm. Many olive-skinned people are neutral or soft autumn.
• Hair dye changes the picture. If your hair is dyed, judge by your eyes, brows and skin instead.

What your undertone means for color

Undertone is one of three things that decide your color season. The other two are depth (how light or dark your coloring is) and chroma (how clear or muted it is). Together they place you in one of the 12 seasons of seasonal color analysis.

• Warm undertones usually belong to Spring or Autumn.
• Cool undertones usually belong to Summer or Winter.
• Neutral undertones often land in the "soft" or "deep" seasons, which sit between warm and cool.

If the tests disagree, that's normal. A selfie in daylight is often easier to judge than a mirror, because you can look at it calmly and compare. Huesette does exactly that: it reads your undertone, depth and contrast from one selfie and shows you your season and palette.