Back to “school” with Color Theory and Makeup!

I hear often, “I can’t find the right shade of lipstick for my lips they always turn a weird color on me.” “My lips naturally have a lot of purple in them and colors never look the same on me as they do on others.” “I don’t wear lipstick because I can’t ever find the shade that compliments my skin.”

So how do you pick the right shades of lipstick, gloss blush, bronzer and shadows? I always say, there are no hard fast rules with makeup, and playing is highly encouraged. Try new things, its fun! There are a few guidelines that can help point you in a generally reassuring direction.

Let’s start with the basics, color theory! You may know I did childcare for many, many years. I have a basic color wheel hung up that I always shared with the kids in guiding them to choose paints that don’t end up one brown blob. Although we all know they love to experience art most of all, and they quickly discovered why Ms. Sheen might be making those suggestions. So lets use it for this description with makeup too! There are two categories with color that are helpful in choosing shades for makeup. Warm tones and Cool tones. Once you know which undertones you haver, you’ll generally know which shades look better on you. This is makeup though and its meant to play and explore, so putting a pop of one tone with the other that predominately compliments your skin better is always fun to explore! Also some people have neutral undertones, so that is definitely where exploring will work the best!

The tried and true way to tell if you have warm or cool undertones is to flip over your wrist and look at the color of your veins! Those with blue appearing veins have cool undertones. Easy to remember since blue is a cool toned color. Those with veins that appear more green are warm toned! If you aren’t sure which of the two colors your veins appear you may be neutral undertone.

Have you ever wondered why you tend to prefer gold or silver jewelry? This is another way to know which undertones you likely have. Those that prefer gold jewelry tend to have warm undertones and those that prefer silver have cool undertones. If you’ve never really had a preference then you likely have neutral undertones.

Warm tones on the color wheel as shown below are reds, and orange shades. Cool tones as shown below are blues, and purples. This doesn’t mean blue lipstick, this means for example red lipstick with cool or blue undertones. Versus a more Orangey red lipstick. Perhaps you look good in almost any shade, you may have neutral undertones, which has more of a balance of each category.

To conclude this fun little lesson on how color, skin tones, and undertones all play a part in choose the perfect shades of makeup I would love to offer those reading this article a complimentary 1:1 session to help you pick the right shades to compliment your skin! Please reach out in the contact box!

The last thing I think is good to note on this topic was best described by this article from Byrdie, “It’s important to note that skin tone and undertone are two very different things. Skin tone refers to the depth of your skin (fair, medium, dark, deep) and can vary according to the season (fairer during the cooler months, deeper during warmer seasons). Then there’s undertone, which reflects the base of your skin. This means that the common misconception that fair skin can’t be warm or deep skin can’t be cool is just that: a misconception.” https://www.byrdie.com/best-lipstick-for-skin-tone