colormatch

Colours for a neutral skin tone

Gold and silver both look acceptable, your veins read neither green nor blue, and the shades that work lean least in either direction.

A neutral undertone means your skin carries warmth and coolness in roughly equal measure, with neither taking the lead. How deep your skin is has no bearing on it: depth and undertone are two different measurements, and every undertone, neutral included, is found at every depth there is. What neutral changes is which shades sit comfortably near your face, not how much colour you have.

Because neutral sits between, it is not served by a palette built to make an undertone obvious. The ten shades below are the five quietest from spring, a warm season, and the five quietest from summer, a cool one — aqua blue, salmon pink and periwinkle on the warm side, sage green, seafoam and powder blue on the cool side. Softened colour is the common ground. A shade at full strength picks a side your skin has not picked.

Colours for a neutral undertone

The quietest shades from a warm season and a cool one. A neutral undertone is not served by either extreme, so these are the colours that lean least in either direction.

  • Aqua Blue#4AA6C8
  • Warm Turquoise#2F9E9E
  • Salmon Pink#E58B7B
  • Light Moss#A3B56B
  • Periwinkle#7D8FD6
  • Sage Green#8FA392
  • Mauve#9B7F96
  • Seafoam#8AB8AD
  • Powder Blue#8FB3D1
  • Soft Plum#7A5A73

Shades to be careful with

These are the shades spring and summer both struggle with — the ones that work against this undertone rather than with it.

  • Black#111111
  • Burgundy#5D1A2B
  • Dusty Mauve#9B8290
  • Charcoal Grey#3A3D42
  • Icy Grey Blue#B9C6D2
  • Orange#E2601B

Checking it at home

  1. When both metals pass

    Hold gold near one cheek and silver near the other in daylight and look for the one that fails. On a neutral undertone neither does: both look reasonable and you end up choosing on preference. That non-result is itself the result, not a test you have muddled.

  2. When neither white wins

    Try an optical white shirt under your chin and then a cream one. A warm colouring goes visibly tired beside the cold white and a cool one goes yellow beside the cream. A neutral colouring does neither strongly — both are wearable, and the difference is small enough that you have to look twice.

  3. When the wrist says nothing

    Veins on a neutral wrist tend to read grey, or as a mixture, or to swap answers between one window and another. People usually repeat this one hoping it will resolve. A mixed reading taken twice on two different days is worth more than a confident reading taken once under a bulb.

Wearing it

  • Take the middle of a colour rather than either end: a mid slate blue rather than an icy or an electric one, a soft rose rather than a coral or a fuchsia.
  • Both metals are open to you, so choose by outfit instead of by rule. Wearing the two together is easier on a neutral undertone than on any other.
  • For white, soft white and oyster split the difference between optical white and cream and cause no trouble in either direction.
  • Navy is the safe dark neutral. Black is in the warnings above for a reason, so if you wear it, break it with a lighter colour at the collar rather than flat to the jaw.

Get your free colour report

Questions about a neutral undertone

My results came back split. Have I done the tests wrong?

Almost certainly not. A split result is what a neutral undertone looks like from the outside, because the tests are built to detect a lean and you do not have much of one. If gold and silver both pass and your veins read neither colour, record that as the answer rather than as a failure and move on to depth and contrast.

Does neutral mean I can wear anything?

No, and that is the usual misreading. Neutral skin has no strong lean for a colour to clash with, but it is easily overwhelmed: a shade at full strength takes the attention and the face comes second. What you gain is breadth across the colour wheel. What you give up is the brightest and the iciest version of each shade.

Which season is a neutral undertone?

Neutral is not a season of its own. The palette here is drawn from spring and summer because they pair a warm season with a cool one, but the season that actually fits you is decided by depth and contrast rather than by undertone. The free colour report works that out from a photo or from seven questions.

Is neutral the same thing as olive?

No. Neutral describes an undertone that leans neither warm nor cool. Olive describes a green or grey cast sitting over the skin, which can appear on warm-leaning and cool-leaning colouring alike. You can be both at once, and the olive page deals with the cast.

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