How to Find Your Undertone: 6 Tests That Work

To find your undertone, check bare skin in daylight with a handful of quick tests: jewelry, white vs cream fabric, how you react to sun, and how certain makeup colors sit on you. Go with the answer most of the tests agree on. If they keep splitting down the middle, you're likely neutral or olive.

Want a guided version? Our undertone test walks you through it step by step.

Undertone vs skin tone

These get mixed up constantly, so let's clear it up first.

• Skin tone (or depth) is how light or dark your skin is on the surface. Fair, light, medium, tan, deep.
• Undertone is the color sitting underneath. Warm, cool, neutral or olive.

Any depth can have any undertone. Fair skin can be warm. Deep skin can be cool. A lot of bad shade advice comes from assuming dark means warm and pale means cool, which simply isn't true.

	Skin tone	Undertone
What it describes	How light or dark	The hue underneath
Examples	Fair, medium, deep	Warm, cool, neutral, olive
Changes with sun?	Yes	Generally no
Main makeup job	Foundation depth	Blush, lip and foundation hue

Before you test

Set yourself up so the results mean something:

• Use daylight. Stand near a window, not in direct sun. Warm bulbs push everyone golden.
• Bare skin. Wash off makeup and give any post-cleansing redness ten minutes to calm down.
• Look at your jawline and neck, not your cheeks. Cheeks are often red, which reads falsely cool.

The 6 tests

1. The jewelry test

Hold gold, then silver, against your face and wrist.

• Gold looks better: likely warm.
• Silver looks better: likely cool.
• Both look great: likely neutral or olive.

"Better" means your skin looks clearer and more even, not that you like the metal more. Be strict with yourself.

2. The white vs cream test

Hold a piece of pure bright white and a piece of soft cream or ivory under your chin.

• White looks crisp, cream makes you look sallow: cool.
• Cream looks soft and flattering, white makes you look washed out or harsh: warm.
• Both are fine: neutral.
• White makes you look slightly green or gray: a strong hint of olive.

This is one of the more reliable tests, so give it extra weight.

3. The sun reaction test

Think about how your skin behaves without sunscreen (purely as memory, please don't go test it).

• Burns easily, rarely tans, turns pink: often cool.
• Tans easily to golden or bronze, rarely burns: often warm or olive.
• Burns a little, then tans: often neutral.

This test gets less useful the deeper your skin is, since many people with deep skin rarely burn regardless of undertone. Treat it as one clue.

4. The vein test

Look at the veins on the inside of your wrist in daylight.

• Blue or purple: points cool.
• Green or olive: points warm.
• Hard to tell or a mix: points neutral.

Honestly, this is the least reliable of the six. Veins look different depending on light, skin thickness and depth. It's famous because it's easy, not because it's accurate.

5. The blush swatch test

Swatch a peachy-coral blush on one cheek and a cool, rosy pink on the other. Step back from the mirror.

• Peach looks like a natural flush, pink looks chalky or purple: warm.
• Pink looks fresh, peach looks orange or muddy: cool.
• Both work: neutral.

No blushes at home? The live virtual try-on lets you flip between warm and cool shades on your own face.

6. The foundation test

If you've bought foundation before, think back.

• Pink-toned shades always look right: cool.
• Yellow or golden shades always look right: warm.
• Everything looks either too pink or too yellow: this is the classic olive giveaway.

The olive undertone, explained

Olive is the one most quizzes miss. It's a muted, slightly green or gray cast that sits alongside warm or neutral tones. It shows up across many depths, from light olive to deep olive.

Signs you might be olive:

• Pure white makes your skin look a bit green or gray.
• Foundation shopping is a nightmare. Pink shades look ashy and yellow shades look too bright.
• You tan easily.
• Both gold and silver can look good, and you lean toward muted colors rather than bright ones.

Olive skin usually looks best in muted, slightly warm blush colors like soft terracotta, dusty rose and warm berry. Super bright cool pinks can look stark. For specific color picks, see our blush for olive skin guide.

Why the tests disagree

It's completely normal to get mixed results. The usual culprits:

• Redness. Rosacea, sensitivity or a fresh scrub can make warm skin read cool.
• A tan. Surface color shifts, so warm-looking results in summer can flip in winter.
• Bad lighting. Bathroom bulbs and phone screens skew everything.
• Bias. If you love silver jewelry, you'll want to see it winning.
• Neutral or olive skin. If you're neutral, split results are the result.

Here's a simple way to settle it. Write down the answer from each test, ignore the vein test if it's the odd one out, and go with the majority. Two warm, two neutral and one cool? Call yourself warm-neutral and choose colors that aren't extreme in either direction.

Your results	What it likely means	Where to start with blush and lip
Mostly warm	Warm undertone	Peach, coral, terracotta, brick
Mostly cool	Cool undertone	Rose, berry, fuchsia, blue-red
Evenly split	Neutral undertone	Rosy nudes, soft berry, true red
Split plus green or gray cast	Olive undertone	Muted terracotta, dusty rose, warm berry

Neutrals have the most freedom, which is lovely but can make choosing harder. Our lipstick for neutral undertones page narrows it down.

Undertone is one piece of the puzzle

Your undertone tells you the temperature of colors that suit you. It doesn't tell you how deep or how bright those colors should be. Two warm-toned people can need very different blushes if one has soft, muted coloring and the other has crisp, high-contrast features.

That's where seasonal color analysis comes in. Once you know your undertone, take our color analysis quiz to find your season, and you'll know the exact family of colors to shop.