What is my undertone?
Your undertone is the color under the surface of your skin: warm, cool or neutral. Measure yours from one photo, or check it at home in two minutes.
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Your reading
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The full report names your season out of 12, shows the colors on your own photo and lists what to wear.
Get the full report, from $19Undertone is not skin tone
Skin tone is how light or dark your skin is. It changes with sun. Undertone is the tint underneath, and it stays the same all year. Two people with the same skin tone can have different undertones, which is why one foundation shade looks right on one and orange on the other.
| Undertone | The skin leans | Colors that sit well |
|---|---|---|
| Warm | Golden, peach, yellow | Colors with yellow in them: rust, olive, coral, cream |
| Cool | Pink, rose, blue-red | Colors with blue in them: navy, berry, emerald, pure white |
| Neutral | Neither way strongly | Soft, middle colors from both sides |
How we measure it
flatterlab reads undertone as the hue angle of your skin color in CIELAB, a color space built to match how people see color. It first corrects the light, using a sheet of white paper in the photo when there is one. Then it samples four spots on the face (both cheeks, forehead and chin), drops the brightest and darkest pixels to skip shine and shadow, and takes the middle color. An angle above 57 degrees reads as warm, which means more yellow. Below 53 degrees reads as cool, which means more red and pink. Between the two reads as neutral. The cut-offs are first settings and may move as more real photos are checked.
Three checks you can do at home
- White paper. Stand by a window and hold a sheet of printer paper next to your bare face. If your skin looks yellow or golden next to it, you lean warm. If it looks pink or rosy, you lean cool.
- Veins. Look at the inside of your wrist in daylight. Green veins point to warm, blue or purple to cool. A mix points to neutral. This one is weak on deep skin.
- Jewelry. Hold gold and then silver near your face. The metal that makes your skin look even is the one that matches your undertone: gold for warm, silver for cool.
Home checks disagree with each other often. Lamp light, a tan and foundation all move the answer. A measured photo in daylight removes most of that.
From undertone to season
Undertone is one of the things seasonal color analysis looks at. Warm undertones land in Spring or Autumn, cool ones in Summer or Winter. Depth and clarity decide the rest. How we measure has the full method and its limits.