The Details...
To start make sure you have natural lighting, this is key! Whether you are wearing makeup or not doesn’t matter so much, go with your usual day to day beauty routine. If you are wearing makeup it should be matched to your skin tone anyway so you will get the same result. Use one or all three of the following steps to decide your undertone:
1. The first and usually most obvious indicator of your undertone is to decide whether a silver or gold sheath of fabric held around your neck and near your face is most flattering. Think of 'most flattering' as the colour that works more harmoniously with your skin tone and hair colour.Silver indicates you have cool colouring and gold indicates warm colouring. Visit your local fabric store if you don’t have gold and silver fabric available.However, if you prefer not to do this or you are unsure of which colour is most flattering for you then continue on to the next step.
2. Using the palms of your hands is another great way to help determine your undertone. Holding your hands flat with palms facing up decide if you see blue, red or yellow most predominantly. If you see mostly blue then you are cool or mostly yellow then you are warm. If red is coming through strongest then lucky you, this means you can swing between cool and warm. That being said,you will almost always have a slightly stronger connection to one or the other...continue on to the next step.
3. Another indicator can be a simple question of whether you wear gold or silver jewellery? Even if you switch it up and wear both gold and silver jewellery it’s likely you lean towards one more than the other. If you're married, what colour are your wedding rings? Take a look at your collection of jewellery and see if one tone features more heavily. A preference for silver jewellery indicates cool colouring and gold jewellery indicates warm colouring.
Use these images to help clarify your colouring:
The traditional colour theory of the four seasons, which most of us are familiar with,is a great tool to illustrate how cool and warm undertones relate to bright and soft colours.
Blue undertones are attributes of the cool colour seasons, Winter and Summer, while yellow undertones are attributes of the warm colour seasons, Spring and Autumn.
Which season you fit into relates to your undertones combined with wether bright or soft colours are more flattering to your complexion.
As well as colours being flattering I believe the second tier of colour analysis also depends a lot on personal preference. Bright and soft colours represent different personalities and therefore it is likely you will have a preference based simply on your personality traits and what you wish to portray in your clothing selections. For this reason I prefer the four seasons colour theory be used as a reference point only.
Have a think about your personality, who and what you want to present through your colour choices and look at the dominance of colours in your current wardrobe. What you gravitate towards most will presumably be the colours, bright or soft, that always make you feel amazing and full of confidence.
As you can see by identifying your undertone, cool or warm, and then deciding on your tone preference you can start to narrow your colour palette into a group of complimentary colours. The key is to look for colours with blue or yellow undertones to match your own. Once again, you shouldn’t feel limited in the colours you wear, the focus here is on selecting colour groups in order to build a cohesive wardrobe...and of course you will have a handful of pieces that stray from the group which is fine!
Keeping your colour palette in mind when shopping and knowing the undertone that works best for you is the first step to building a wardrobe with intent and purpose. It is a great tool when selecting prints and accent colours to work back with your wardrobe. With this consistency your wardrobe will easily translate into multiple outfits, not just pieces that sit alone,and the days of thinking you have nothing to wear will slowly become a distant memory!
