Colour Match Guide

Finding your undertone essential for finding your perfect foundation shade. It's not as simple as pale and fair, to dark and deep. To get that flawless natural-looking match you have to get the undertone of YOUR skin right.

We spoke to pro-makeup artists to break down what that actually means, and how to tell what yours is so you can choose your perfect foundation match!

Starting with the basics, undertone is "the permanent, underlying colour that your skin tone casts. Either cool, warm or neutral," while skin tone is "the colour you see on the surface of your skin. Either fair, light, medium, olive, dark or deep."

Getting both right is essential in your choice of foundation. It will ensure a seamless blend, and getting it wrong risks leaving you looking ashy, grey, too yellow or too orange.

The three main undertones to look for are:

Cool, Warm and Neutral

Cool undertones include pink and bluish hues. Warm undertones range from peach to yellow and golden. Neutral undertones have a mixture of both warm and cool tones.

One big foundation mistake is to assume that pale skin means a cool undertone and vice versa. It’s a total myth that fair skin tones have cool undertones and darker skin tones have warm undertones. Different undertones can be seen across all skin tones.

Here is how different undertones may appear in different skin: