Hairnastics

By Shelly M.

February 13, 2025

Updated from original article posted here on Hairnastics.com on June 20, 2023, and here on LinkedIn on February 13, 2025.

By Shelly M.

Simply stated, skin undertones are the natural colors that lay beneath the surface of your epidermis [Healthline, 2022]. Everything from the clothing you wear, to the hair colors you choose, to the makeup you wear are affected by your skin undertones. Much like the shape of your face, skin undertones can make one color look great on one person, and not so great on another.

How Do I Tell My Skin Undertones?

Skin undertones, along with face shape, is another element in creating harmonious looks. The article “How to Identify Your Skin’s Undertones and What This Means for You” by Healthline covers this topic in detail. We’ll cover a few of the high points here.

What Are the Types of Skin Undertones?

Simply stated, they are 1) warm undertones, 2) cool undertones, and 3) neutral undertones.

Ask yourself this question: Can I see my veins, and if so, what color are they? The color of your veins can tell what your skin undertones are.

Greenish tint to your veins? You likely have warm undertones.

Blue veins mean cool undertones.

No real color to your veins? Maybe look harder, but then again, maybe you fall into the category of neutral undertones!

There’s also the natural olive undertone if you’re looking at the shine of your skin as an indicator of undertone.

Beyond the color of your veins, there are a couple of other tests that you can use to determine skin undertone. Your eye color, hair color, and how you look in a white tee are among these other methods [Healthline, 2022].

As a personal conclusion to be drawn from looking at the colors of veins as indicators of skin undertone, it seems reasonable to say that skin undertones have nothing to do with race. That is, there are people of all races with skin undertones in each of these categories.

Why is the Type of Skin Undertone Important For Me?

While I won’t venture to say that your skin undertones will make you look bad in any outfit or hair color, I will say to use you skin undertone to pick your COLOR CHARACTERISTICS. What are your color characteristics? They are the subset of color attributes that look really good on people with your skin undertones.

At a high level, more ashen colors, along with silver, platinum, and rose gold may be great starting places for cool undertones. On the other hand, yellow-ish gold may be better for warmer skin undertones.

The Healthline article that inspired this post goes down to the types of foundation you should wear and hair colors you should get based on your skin undertones. Since Hairnastics is hair-centric, we would be remiss not to mention understanding your skin undertones if you’re thinking about dying your hair any color.

For more information about skin undertones, determining which one your are, and dressing to make your undertones shine, check out the Healthline article “How to Identify Your Skin’s Undertones and What This Means for You.”

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