How to Find Your Skin Undertone: 6 Tests You Can Do at Home

You can find your skin undertone at home with six quick tests done in daylight on a bare face: the vein test, gold vs. silver jewelry, stark white vs. off-white fabric, how your skin reacts to sun, your natural eye and hair color, and the white paper test. Whichever answer most tests agree on is your undertone.

What is an undertone, and how is it different from skin tone?

Undertone is the warm, cool, or neutral cast that sits beneath the surface color of your skin. Skin tone is how light or deep your skin is: fair, light, medium, tan, deep. They're separate scales. Someone with medium skin can be cool, and someone with very fair skin can be warm.

• Warm undertone: skin reads yellow, golden, or peachy.
• Cool undertone: skin reads pink, rosy, or slightly bluish.
• Neutral undertone: skin doesn't lean clearly either way.
• Olive undertone: a greenish or grayish cast over a yellow base. It's easiest to treat it as its own category.

"Undertone" isn't a formal dermatology term. It comes from styling and makeup. But it does have a scientific counterpart. Skin color is driven mainly by melanin in the epidermis, which comes in two types: brown-black eumelanin and yellow-red pheomelanin. Hemoglobin in the small blood vessels and carotenoids from your diet add a smaller share. In colorimetry, skin color is measured on the CIE L*a*b* scale, where a* tracks redness and b* tracks yellowness. What we call undertone is roughly how that yellow-to-red balance reads to the eye.

6 undertone tests you can do at home

Before you start, set up three things. Wash your face, sit facing a window with daylight (not direct sun), and pull your hair back. Keep colored clothing, colored walls, and colored eyeshadow away from your face.

1. The vein test

1. Look at the inside of your wrist in daylight.
2. Notice which color your veins look closest to.

• Mostly green: points to warm.
• Blue or purple: points to cool.
• Hard to tell, or a mix: you may be neutral.

Here's the thing most guides skip. Blood is red, and veins aren't actually blue. They look bluish because of how light scatters in skin, how deep and wide the vessel is, and how our eyes perceive color. The color you see is filtered through your skin, so the test gives a hint, but it's a weak one on its own. Veins are also hard to see on deep skin, so if that's you, save this test for last.

2. The jewelry test (gold or silver?)

1. Hold a gold piece (a yellow metal around #D4AF37) in one hand and a silver piece (#C0C0C0) in the other.
2. Bring each one up under your chin and next to your wrist. Look at your skin, not the jewelry.

• Gold makes your skin look brighter and more alive: warm.
• Silver makes your skin look clearer and fresher: cool.
• Both look about the same: neutral.

That's also why Rengin asks about your jewelry preference during the analysis. Which metal people have reached for over the years, because it "just looks better on me," is one of the most practical undertone clues there is. One catch: the question isn't which one you like, it's which one makes your face look more rested. Taste and trends can easily skew this test.

3. The white vs. off-white test

1. Grab two tops or towels, one stark white (#FFFFFF) and one off-white or cream (something like #F3EAD8).
2. Hold each one right under your face.

• Cream softens your face and stark white washes you out: warm.
• Stark white brightens your face and cream makes you look sallow or tired: cool.
• Both work: neutral.

This only works if the white is truly white. An old tee that's yellowed in the wash will push your result toward warm.

4. How your skin reacts to sun

Don't go sunbathing to test this. Think back instead: what happened the first time you were in the sun unprotected at the start of summer?

• You tan easily to a golden brown: may point to warm.
• You burn and turn pink first, and tan slowly: may point to cool.

This is the weakest of the six. The Fitzpatrick scale dermatologists use is a self-reported rating of how easily you burn and how well you tan. It measures sun sensitivity, not undertone, and a cool-toned person with deep skin may rarely burn.

5. Eye and hair clues

Your natural eye and hair colors often form a family with your undertone.

• Warm signs: natural hair that shows copper, red, or golden highlights in the sun; hazel, green, or amber-flecked eyes.
• Cool signs: ashy brown or blue-black natural hair; gray-blue, icy blue, or cool dark brown eyes.

Dark brown hair with dark brown eyes doesn't say much here. Dyed or gray hair can mislead you too, so check your natural color at the roots.

6. The white paper test

1. Hold a plain sheet of white printer paper next to your bare face or jawline.
2. See which way your skin shifts next to it.

• Yellow, golden, or peachy: warm.
• Pink or rosy: cool.
• No clear shift: neutral.
• A greenish or grayish cast: possibly olive.

A lot of printer paper contains optical brighteners that give it a bluish glow. That can make your skin look warmer than it is.

Your results at a glance

Reading it is simple. If at least 4 of the 6 tests point the same way, you can trust that answer. If you land at 3 and 3, you're most likely neutral or olive.

Why the tests disagree (and where they go wrong)

Mixed results are really common, and they don't mean you did it wrong. These are the usual suspects:

• Lighting: Yellow bulbs make everyone look warm, and cool white LEDs make everyone look cool. Skip testing at night.
• Makeup and skincare: Foundation, concealer, bronzer, and tinted moisturizer cover your real undertone.
• Tans and self-tanner: Test at the end of summer and you'll probably read warmer than you are. Redo it in winter if you can.
• Redness: Flushing from acne, rosacea, a hot shower, or a workout comes from hemoglobin, and it can make a warm person look cool. If the redness is persistent, a dermatologist is the right person to ask.
• Diet: Carotenoids affect how yellow your skin looks. In one study, six-week changes in fruit and vegetable intake tracked with changes in skin redness and yellowness. So the surface reading can shift a little.
• Phone cameras: Auto white balance, filters, and screen settings all reinterpret color. The same face can look like two different undertones on two phones. Trust your eyes in a mirror, not a photo.
• Neutral and olive skin: These two groups don't fit how the tests are built. An olive-skinned person can get green veins, a gray paper result, and "both" on jewelry.

Repeating the tests on two different days in the same light, and writing your results down, evens out most of these errors. We cover the different ways to get a full analysis in how to get a color analysis.

From undertone to season: why undertone alone isn't enough

Undertone is the first piece of a color analysis, not the whole thing. Seasonal color analysis also looks at value (how light or deep your skin, hair, and eyes are), chroma (whether bright or soft colors suit you), and contrast (the light-to-dark difference between your hair, eyes, and skin).

Picture two people who are both warm. One has fair skin, light golden-brown hair, and bright green eyes. The other has deep olive skin, dark brown hair, and dark brown eyes. The first usually sits in the Spring family and glows in light, clear shades like coral (#FF7F50) and peach (#FFCBA4). The second usually sits in the Autumn family and looks more balanced in deep, earthy shades like rust (#B7410E) and olive green (#556B2F). Same undertone, very different palette. The Deep Autumn color palette is a good example of where deep and warm leads.

For how the season system works and how the four seasons split into subtypes, read what is seasonal color analysis. Rengin's analysis doesn't read undertone in isolation either. It uses a selfie plus a few questions about your eyes, hair, skin, and jewelry to weigh undertone and contrast together, then places you in a season and one of 24 subtypes. Whatever route you pick, your six test results are a great place to start, girl.