Lately, I’ve been reading more about how to wear the right colors, based on your skin tone. Your skin color and undertone is the secret to how to find your best colors to wear to make you look effortlessly glowy and radiant. And who doesn’t want that, right? Today I’m sharing practical tips to help you find your best colors.

Earlier this year, I discovered a quiz you can take to find your color season. It’s essentially finding a color palette that looks the best on you, based on your features. HERE’S the quiz I took, and discovered I’m light summer, which really isn’t a surprise because I tend to gravitate towards lighter colors anyway.

Did you know I have a whole section of fashion how-tos on the blog? You can find them HERE.

How to Find Your Best Colors to Wear

These “quizzes” are just starting points. I’m of the belief that if there’s a certain color that you enjoy wearing, but not necessarily in the color family you’re matched with for your skin tone, then you should still wear it. Fashion is all about what makes you feel most confident and comfortable. So this is just a guide, if you’re wanting to know what colors might work best.

Determine Your Skin Undertone

Your first step in determining your the best colors to wear is to find out your skin tone. Skin tone is grouped into three categories: warm, cool and neutral.

For the most accurate read, you have to go further than just surface-level color. There are many factors that can alter the true color of your skin from makeup, lotion, sun exposure, rosacea or artificial lighting.

Be sure your skin is makeup-free with no lotions, sunless-tanning products or over exposed to the sun. You also want to be in natural lighting for this skin test.

Next, take a piece of white paper and put it up against your skin. What colors jump out at you with the paper against your skin?

If your skin looks green, yellow or light brown against the paper, you most likely have a warm undertone. If your skin looks blue or light pink, you most likely have cool-toned skin.

Neutral undertone is a bit more difficult to determine, and you basically have to rule out discovering warm or cool tones before believing you have a neutral undertone. The simplest way to determine if you have a neutral undertone is by looking at your veins on the inside part of your wrist. If they look both green and blue, you likely have a neutral skin tone.

Use Your Hair Color To Determine Your Best Colors

Though your skin tone plays a big factor in what colors look best on you, it’s actually a combination of skin, hair and eyes that gives you the best answer. Your hair color can also help you determine what your best colors to wear are.

As you can see in the test I took, if you have black, grey, ashy brown or ashy blonde, you have cool features.

If your hair is warm tones like chestnut, rich brown, red or strawberry blonde, then your hair leans more towards warm tones.

Though black hair is the darkest hair color you can have, it’s within the cool tones family. So dark hair doesn’t necessarily mean warm tones. It all comes down to the tone, and it’s interesting how colors work.

Use Your Eye Color To Determine Your Best Color

Those with gray, blue or green eyes are generally in the cool skin tones family. However, those who have brown, hazel or amber eyes are generally in the warm skin tones family.

The color categories for eyes is a little more obvious than hair because the lighter colors are grouped in the cool tones, while the darker eyes are grouped in the warmer tones.

Your hair and eye color could be both in the warm and cool-tone families. That’s why I like the guide I linked at the beginning of this post because it factors situations like that in.

Colors to Wear with Warm Skin Tones

Now that you’ve determined what your skin undertone is and what color family your hair and eye color fall into, it’s time to find out what colors look best on you. If you fall into the warm skin toned family, then warm colors like camel, cream, olive green, mustard yellow and warm reds will look best on you.

You should avoid colors like pastels or really light and bright colors. These can wash you out.

Colors to Wear with Cool Skin Tones

The best colors to wear with cool skin tones fall to more bright colors to enhance your skin’s natural coloring. Colors such as rose, icy blue, emerald, lavender, white or black are excellent color choices to wear.

The colors you should try to avoid wearing are those with warm undertones like deep brown, beige, deep purple or dark yellow.

Colors to Wear with Neutral Skin Tones

If you have a neutral skin tone, your color wheel gets a little bigger with what looks best on you. A neutral skin tone is neither overly warm or cool. A few colors that look the best on neutral skin tones include jade green, red, white and medium blue.

Try to avoid medium yellow colors. They likely won’t provide enough of a contrast for your skin color.

Work In Universally-Appealing Colors into Your Wardrobe

If all this seems a bit intimidating, there are also a few colors that are universally striking no matter what your skin undertone says. These colors include bright red, pale pink, dark purple and teal.

Incorporate Jewelry That Matches Your Skin Tone

Did you know that the specific jewelry metals can also look better on some people versus others, depending on their skin tone?

Cool-toned skin looks best with white metals like silver jewelry or white gold. Warm-toned skin looks best with yellow metals like gold colors. And lucky for all of us, diamonds look good with any skin tone.

Wear Makeup That Works Well With Your Coloring

Have you ever bought foundation online and some of the guides talk about warm or cool undertones? If you can’t go to a retailer in-person to buy your foundation, this is the next best option to match your skintone to the right shade of foundation.

Typically for those with cool undertones, the foundation with have shades of pink in it. People with warm undertones will have a yellow tint to it. Neutral tones will have a peachy tone.

Eyeshadows and lip color should also be considered when determining which colors to wear. The easiest way to do this is to refer back to the colors that look best with your clothing.

Do you know what your best colors to wear are? Let me know in the comments below!

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