Nailing the perfect foundation shade can be tricky, but it all comes down to determining your undertone. The goal of a foundation is to match your natural skin tone and even out the overall appearance of your skin. Using the correct foundation shade will allow your natural skin tone to shine through.
The right foundation shade should match your skin's undertone. While your skin tone is how light or dark your skin is, the 'undertone' refers to the colours under the surface of your skin and can be warm, cool, or neutral. While your skin tone may change with the seasons, your undertone should remain consistent.
Your foundation should blend seamlessly with your natural skin tone. You don't want there to be an obvious difference between where your foundation ends and your bare skin begins. Otherwise, your foundation will look unnatural and caked on.
Pick the right foundation shade and your skin shouldn't look made up at all. Instead, it should just look like great skin—luminous, healthy, and flawless. Counterintuitively, finding an exact match with foundation or tinted moisturizer isn't the goal, explains Kosas founder Sheena Yaitanes.
Your ideal foundation shade probably won't match your face or hands or neck exactly. The idea is to find an undertone match with your body, and pick a foundation which is a cross between your face's colour, and that of your chest. This is because the skin on the chest reflects your undertones better than your face.
Hold a white sheet of paper against your face and look at yourself in the mirror. If your skin appears yellow next to the paper, your skin has a warm hue and undertone. If your face has a rosy blush, you're cool toned. If you can't determine between the two, you're in the middle with a neutral undertone.
Flip over your arm and take a look at the inside of your wrist. If your veins appear to have a blue or deep purple tint, you likely have cool skin undertones. If they look more greenish, you likely have warm or olive undertones. If you can't tell one way or the other, you may have neutral undertones.
“Bring the bottle up to your neck to try to match the color to your skin, as close as possible,” he says. Then, seek out the area of the drugstore that has the best lighting and mirrors. “Sometimes this is not always the makeup aisle. Look for a place with some natural light seeping through.”
If you've picked the wrong undertone:
If you are COOL and pick a WARM or NEUTRAL foundation, it will look yellow on you. If you are WARM and pick a COOL foundation, it will make your skin look pale and icy. If you pick a NEUTRAL foundation, it will look grey.
'Beige' and 'Sand' foundation shades have warm tones.
Instead of matching the shade of your foundation to the usual spots people list off — like your jaw, neck, or the back of your hand — Vo suggests swatching it on the highest point of your cheekbone, the same place where you sweep on highlighter. She considers this area as the "median" skin tone of your complexion.
Foundation always looks best on skin that's been properly cleansed and moisturized and is free of any flakes, dry patches, or texture. “You have to make sure that the skin is smooth—not dry, not oily,” Bobbi says. A good moisturizer will do the trick, and a dab of eye cream will fill in any fine lines around the eyes.
Your foundation looks grey or ashy because it is much lighter than your skin tone. Using a lighter foundation on your skin can highlight the foundation thus making your skin look unnatural. In order to prevent your foundation from looking ashy, you should add 2-3 drops of darker shade foundation and blend it well.
The experts have spoken, and the answer is, foundation should be one or two shades lighter than your skin tone. This is because when you use bronzer or contour then the foundation should be able to blend and give the perfect look to your face.
Blend The Foundation Lighter Than You
When in doubt, always pick a shade that is slightly lighter than your complexion rather than darker. This can prevent your complexion from looking darker than the rest of your body. It is the safest way to go when unsure about two shades that may look too light or too dark.
The general rule of thumb is that you should always opt for a shade lighter than foundation when choosing your concealer colour. Doing so helps to mask darker discolouration, but be careful not to over-correct! Knowing how to pick the right concealer is essential to ensuring that your look does not appear ghostly.
What is the colour of your veins? The easiest way to determine your undertone is by opting for a closer inspection of the insides of your wrists. If they appear green, your undertone is warm while blue veins signify cooler undertones. If you can see a mix of both, you likely have neutral undertones.
Finding your undertone: The colour of your veins
Take a look at the veins on the inside of your wrist. Do they appear more blue or green? If your veins appear more blue, you're cool-toned but if you see more green, you're warm-toned. If you see a fair amount of both both green and blue, you have a neutral undertone.
Check the Color of Your Veins
If you look at the veins on your wrists in natural light, the color you see can tell you a lot about your undertone. If they look slightly green, you probably have warm undertones, but if they skew more blue or purple, your undertones are likely cool.
Colours that suit your skin tone. Clarins advises, “If your skin has pink or red undertones, go for a beige or pinky-beige foundation. Those with sallow skins with yellow undertones can colour correct with a pinky beige or neutral foundation. And those with olive or dark skin should choose golden beige shades.”