image: istock
Article by BR Terri
How to tell what your skintone is..and why it's important.
We're sure most of us can describe our skin colour e.g fair, light, dark, and also most of us know what our skin type is e.g dry, normal, oily, combination. But how many of us know what skintone we have?
Your skintone is the underlying "tone' or "hue' of your skin. You will either have "cool" undertones to your skin, or "warm" undertones to your skin.
Skintone is determined by a couple of things;
a) The amount of Melanin (the natural substance that gives colour & pigment to the skin,eyes and hair).
b) The number of blood vessels that are closest to the skin's surface.
Within ethnic groups skincolour can vary considerably although skintone tends be be consistent. Although exposure to the sun can change a persons skin colour, your skintone will remain unaffected.
Knowing what skintone you have is helpful, as choosing clothes make up or hair colour that will work with your skintone, not against it will ultimately enhance your look.
So how do you tell? Well, the good news is, that you don't need a whole heap of scientific equipment! Just bring along a clean makeup free face, a good mirror, a good dollop of natural light (not fluourescent light), and maybe a friend.
There are a number of ways to tell what your skintone is and we'll outline them here. They're pretty quick and easy so you might want to do a couple of them just to check.
- Turn your wrists over and look at the veins on the inside of your wrists. Make sure you are standing in direct sunlight. If your veins seem to have a "green" tone - then you have a warm skintone, blueish looking veins generally indicate a cool skintone.
- Hold a piece of plain white paper to your face (make it a decent size say A4). Look at how your skin looks in contrast to the paper. Does it look yellow or golden? If so you have a warm skintone, if it looks more pink, then you have a cool skintone.
- If you haven't cleaned behind your ears for a good few years then you may either want to give this one a miss or use it as an opportunity to do so! The skin behind your ear is evidently "pure" in tone. Give it a good clean then have a friend pull your ear forward and look behind it in natural light. If your friend sees a yellow hue, then your've a warm skin tone, more pink - yes you've got it by now, you're a cool skintone.
- Finally lets get the foil out, grab some gold foil and some silver foil. Hold the silver foil up to your face, how does each one make your complexion look? Apart from telling you what costume colour to head towards for your next space party, the right foil will make your complexion look healthy wheras the wrong foil will make your complexion look sallow. And yes you guessed it, if gold foil makes you look good then you have a warm skintone, if the silver one was the bomb for you, then you have cool skintones.
So there you have it. Now you can use this new found knowledge when choosing new make up colours. Looking for a new red lipstick? If you've got warm skintones, head towards more "yellow" based reds, cool skintones should lean towards more "blue" based reds. Same applies when choosing your clothes colours or even hair colours.
So, what colour skintone are you?
I am cool skin tone.i done the veins on the wrist and foil test.thats a great way to tell.