colormatch

A colour analysis app with nothing to install

It opens in this page. Upload a photo or answer seven questions, and you get your colour season, your undertone and a palette you can take shopping — free, with no account.

The photo is read on your own device and is not uploaded, so there is nothing to delete afterwards.

What makes a good photo

Any file works — the reading is what changes. These six things move the result more than anything else you can do.

  • Daylight, not a lampStand near a window in the middle of the day. A bulb adds its own colour to your skin, and that is exactly what the reading measures.
  • Not thisWhat a warm bulb doesThe same face under an indoor bulb. Everything shifts golden, so a cool colouring reads as warm. If the photo looks like this, take another by a window.
  • A plain wall behind youA bare wall in white, grey or any single colour. A busy room bounces colour back onto your skin.
  • Face filling the frameHead and shoulders, close enough that your face takes up most of the picture. A full-length shot gives too few pixels of skin.
  • Eyes and hairline visibleNo sunglasses, no hat, hair off your face. Your eyes and hair carry the contrast half of the reading.
  • No filters, light make-upBeauty filters and heavy foundation replace the very thing being measured. A plain camera photo, bare face if you can.

No photo to hand? Try one of these photos:

Prefer not to use a photo? Answer seven short questions instead.

What it does

The app measures the skin tones in the middle of your photograph and compares their warmth, depth and contrast with the four seasonal palettes. It reports the closest match, how sure it is, and the colours that follow from it — each one named, with the code you can paste into a shop filter.

  1. Pick a photograph

    Daylight, no sunglasses, no heavy filter, and a plain background if you have one. A picture taken by a window beats a studio portrait with a coloured backdrop.

  2. It reads the pixels

    The image is decoded onto a small canvas inside the browser and the skin tones are measured there. Nothing is sent anywhere, which is also why it works with the aeroplane mode on.

  3. You get a palette

    A season, a likely undertone, ten colours to wear near your face, four everyday neutrals and the shades that tend to work against you — with an honest note about how close the call was.

What it cannot do

An app reads one photograph. A colour consultant sees you in daylight, moves fabric under your chin and watches what happens to your face over an hour. That is a better measurement, and it is worth the money if you want certainty.

What this replaces is not the consultant. It is the guessing — standing in a shop wondering whether the mustard jumper is a mistake, with nothing to go on. A palette with names and codes answers that question in a second, and costs nothing.

Two things also make any photo-based reading less reliable, and it is better to say so than to hide it: strong artificial light, which adds warmth that is not yours, and a heavy filter, which invents a colouring you do not have. If the result surprises you, the quiz is the second opinion — it uses what you can see rather than what the camera recorded.

Answer seven questions instead

Questions about the app

Is there anything to download?

No. It runs in the browser you are reading this in, on a phone, a tablet or a computer. There is nothing to install, nothing to update and no app store account involved.

Is it really free?

Your season, your undertone, ten colours to wear, four neutrals and the shades to be careful with are free, with no sign-up. The only paid thing is the full report — your measurements, your subtype, every colour measured and a picture to share — and the free result stands on its own without it.

Where does my photo go?

Nowhere. The file is opened on your own device and read on a small off-screen canvas; the pixels never leave the browser. That is a consequence of how it is built, not a promise about how we behave with your data.

How accurate is an app compared with a person?

A consultation in good light with fabric held against your face is more accurate, and it costs a great deal more. What an app measures well is the relationship between your skin, hair and eyes in one photograph. What it cannot see is you in daylight, from several angles, over an hour.

What if I do not want to use a photo?

Answer seven questions instead. They ask about things you can check at home — the veins on your wrist, how your skin behaves in the sun, whether gold or silver suits you — and produce the same kind of result.

Does it work for every skin tone?

It is built to. The reading measures undertone and contrast rather than lightness, and all four seasons occur at every skin depth. The sample photographs on the site deliberately cover a wide range, because a tool that only works on pale skin is not finished.

Once you have your season