colormatch

Colours for a warm skin tone

Gold suits you, cream beats optical white, and the shades that work have yellow somewhere inside them.

A warm undertone means your skin has gold, peach or yellow underneath it, whatever its depth. It is not the same thing as being tanned or being dark: very fair skin is often warm, and deep skin is often cool. Undertone is the direction your colouring leans, and it does not change with the seasons.

Two of the four colour seasons are warm — spring and autumn — so a warm undertone gives you both of their palettes to shop from. Spring supplies the clear, light shades and autumn the deep, earthy ones. The colours below are the five strongest from each, because those are the ones that make the undertone unmistakable.

Colours for a warm undertone

The strongest shades from both warm seasons — spring for the clear ones, autumn for the deep ones.

  • Bright Poppy#D8452F
  • Golden Yellow#E8B33C
  • Apple Green#84B23C
  • Coral#E8734A
  • Peach#F0A878
  • Mustard#C8971F
  • Pumpkin#C2662A
  • Terracotta#A9552C
  • Rust#8F3D1E
  • Brick Red#93342C

Shades to be careful with

These are the shades spring and autumn 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
  • Icy Pink#F0CDD8

Checking it at home

  1. The jewellery test

    Hold gold against one side of your face and silver against the other, in daylight. On a warm undertone the gold looks like it belongs and the silver looks slightly hard, as if it has been laid on top of the skin rather than sitting with it.

  2. The white test

    Hold an optical white shirt under your chin, then a cream or ivory one. Warm skin looks flushed or tired beside the cold white and settles beside the cream. This is the test people find most convincing, because the difference is easy to see even when you are not sure what you are looking for.

  3. The vein test

    Look at the inside of your wrist by a window. Veins that read green point warm, veins that read blue or violet point cool. Take it as one vote of three rather than a verdict — lighting and skin depth both interfere with it.

Wearing it

  • Keep the warm colour at the neckline, where the light bounces from the fabric onto your face. Below the waist it makes almost no difference.
  • Replace optical white with ivory or cream in the pieces you wear most: shirts, collars, scarves.
  • If you want a dark neutral, take camel, chocolate brown or soft navy before black.
  • Gold, copper and bronze jewellery all sit with a warm undertone. Silver is not forbidden, but it works better away from the face.

Get your free colour report

Questions about a warm undertone

Does a warm skin tone mean dark skin?

No. Depth and undertone are two separate things. Skin can be very fair and warm, or deep and cool, and every combination occurs. Undertone describes which way the colour leans, not how much of it there is.

Is warm the same as being a spring or an autumn?

Warm is what spring and autumn have in common, so knowing you are warm narrows it to those two. Which of them you are depends on whether the shades that suit you are clear and light or muted and deep, and the free colour report works that out from a photo or seven questions.

My veins look green in one light and blue in another. What now?

That happens often, which is why the vein test is the weakest of the three. Use the jewellery and white tests instead, both by a window rather than under a bulb, and take whichever answer two of the three agree on.

Can a warm skin tone wear pink or blue?

Yes, in their warm versions. Salmon pink and warm turquoise sit in the spring palette, and coral does the work most people want from pink. What tends not to work is the icy version of either, because the coldness is the problem rather than the colour family.

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