How the undertone test works
Your undertone is the hue that sits under the surface of your skin. It is different from your skin tone, which is how light or deep your skin looks. Two people with the same skin depth can have very different undertones, and your undertone stays the same when you tan.
Here is what happens when you add a photo.
- Your face is found. A face model running in your browser locates your eyes, cheeks and forehead.
- The light is balanced. The whites of your eyes are nearly white in daylight, so their color shows how warm or cool the light in your photo is. The test removes that tint before it measures your skin. If it cannot see your eye whites, it balances against the whole photo and tells you.
- Your skin is measured. The test samples both cheeks and your forehead, skips shine, shadow and stray hair, and finds the typical color.
- Your undertone is read. Skin with more golden yellow in its hue reads warm, skin with more pink reads cool, and a balance of the two reads neutral. You also see where you sit on the scale, so you know if you are clearly warm or close to neutral.
Your photo never leaves your device at any point.
Cool vs warm undertone compared
| Cool | Neutral | Warm | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skin hints | Pink, rosy, bluish | A balance of pink and golden | Golden, peach, yellow |
| Wrist veins | Blue or purple | A mix of blue and green | Mostly green |
| Best metal | Silver, platinum, white gold | Both gold and silver | Yellow gold, brass, copper |
| White or cream | Pure white looks crisp | Soft white works best | Cream and ivory look softer |
| In the sun | Often burns first | Can burn, then tans | Often tans easily |
| Lips to try | Berry, rose, blue red | Rosy nude, soft berry | Coral, brick, warm red |
No single sign is proof. Most people see a mix, so look at several signs together, or let the test read your skin directly.
Four ways to check your undertone by hand
You can check the result of the skin undertone test with these simple tests at home. Do them in daylight, away from lamps. Our guide on how to find your undertone covers five ways in more depth.
The vein test
Look at the veins on the inside of your wrist. Blue or purple veins suggest a cool undertone. Green looking veins suggest warm, because golden skin over blue veins looks green. A mix of both suggests neutral. This test is harder to read on deep skin, where the jewelry and white paper tests work better.
The jewelry test
Hold a piece of gold and a piece of silver jewelry against your skin, one after the other. The metal that makes your skin look clearer and brighter is your best one. Gold usually flatters warm skin, silver usually flatters cool skin, and both work on neutral skin.
The white paper test
Hold a sheet of plain white printer paper under your chin and look at your face in a mirror by a window. Next to pure white, cool skin looks pink or rosy, warm skin looks yellow or golden, and neutral skin looks balanced. You can use the same sheet in our test too. Hold it beside your face in the photo, then tap it after your result appears for a more precise reading.
The sun test
Think about how your skin reacts to the first strong sun of the year. Skin that burns quickly and rarely tans often leans cool. Skin that tans easily and rarely burns often leans warm. This is only a hint, because sun reaction also depends on skin depth.
How to get the most accurate result
- Face a window in daylight. Warm lamps make skin look warmer, and shade makes it look cooler. Daylight is the most neutral light.
- No filter and no beauty mode. Filters shift skin color, sometimes a lot.
- Bare skin works best. Foundation and bronzer cover the color you want to measure. If you wear makeup, keep it light.
- Keep your eyes open and look at the camera. The test uses your eye whites to balance the light.
- Check for redness. A flush from exercise, heat or a cold can make skin read cooler. Test when your skin is calm.
Understanding your result
Your result is one of three words, warm, cool or neutral, plus a scale that shows how strong it is. A marker near either end means a clear undertone. A marker close to the middle band means you are neutral, or neutral leaning warm or cool.
If you are close to the line, try the jewelry test, and pick whichever metal looks better. Our guides to warm and cool undertones and to the neutral undertone explain what each result means for clothes and makeup, and our article on olive skin covers the green gold cast that confuses so many tests.
Your undertone is one of the traits in your color season. To find your full palette, try our free seasonal color analysis, which also looks at your eyes, your hair and the contrast between them.
Accuracy and limits
We test the undertone reading on synthetic faces where the skin color is known in advance, including faces lit by tinted light, to check that the light correction works. A test with people who know their undertone from a professional match is next, and we will publish the results on our methodology page.
- A photo can only show what the camera recorded. Very warm or very cool light can still shift the result, even after correction.
- Olive skin can read as neutral or warm, because its green cast sits on top of the undertone.
- Redness, rosacea and sunburn can make skin read cooler than it is.
- The test names a hue. It says nothing about your skin health. If your skin changes color in a way that worries you, see a doctor.
Privacy
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