Colors for your features
Best colors for warm undertones
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
A warm undertone is the single most useful thing to know about yourself, and also the least decisive. It eliminates half the system outright — every summer and every winter — and then leaves you standing in front of 6 types that all agree your skin leans golden and disagree about everything else.
The 6 warm types are Light Spring, Warm Spring, Bright Spring, Soft Autumn, Warm Autumn and Deep Autumn. What they share is that gold sits better on them than silver and that earth tones read as natural rather than as muddy. What separates them is how deep the coloring runs and how clean the color needs to be, and those two questions are what the rest of this page is about.
The honest key point
Of the four factors, warm undertones is the one that rules options OUT; depth, contrast and chroma are what rule them back in. The warm types divide cleanly by depth: Light Spring, Warm Spring, Bright Spring and Soft Autumn in the lighter half, Warm Autumn and Deep Autumn in the deeper one.
Warm undertones, lighter coloring
For Light Spring, Warm Spring, Bright Spring and Soft Autumn, the palette stays in the upper half of the depth scale. Eight of their published colors:
- Poppy Orange
- Poppy Red
- Shocking Pink
- Deep Rust
- Warm Turquoise
- Golden Amber
- Bright Turquoise
- Deep Olive
Warm undertones, deeper coloring
For Warm Autumn and Deep Autumn, warm undertones are carried at considerably greater weight. Eight more: what separates them from the set above is depth rather than direction, which is the clearest way to see what warm undertones do and do not decide.
- Deep Rust
- Warm Deep Burgundy
- Forest Green
- Pine Green
- Burnt Sienna
- Chestnut
- Deep Mustard
- Deep Amber
What warm undertones should be careful with
Blue-based shades worn under the chin
Icy pastels, blue-reds and anything sold as the "cool" version of a color put a gray cast under the warm skin that comes with warm undertones. The garment is perfectly fine; what it does is make the face above it look like it slept badly.
Three outfits for warm undertones
Assembled from the warm undertones chips above rather than from a lookbook — the first piece sits nearest your face and has to be right, the second is forgiving, and the third is small enough to be a bag, a scarf or a shoe.
- TopPoppy Orange
- BottomDeep Rust
- AccentPoppy Red
- TopShocking Pink
- BottomForest Green
- AccentPoppy Orange
- TopWarm Deep Burgundy
- BottomPoppy Red
- AccentShocking Pink
The 6 warm types in full
Each one has its own page with the whole explanation: Light Spring, Warm Spring, Bright Spring, Soft Autumn, Warm Autumn and Deep Autumn.
Your exact palette depends on all four factors, not on warm undertones alone. The scan reads undertone, depth, contrast and chroma from one photo, shows you the three colors it took off your face so you can correct them, and names your type — free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded.
Get my palette from one photo — free
Questions
How do I know I have warm undertones rather than the opposite?
Three cheap tests, all at a window: gold sits in and silver leaves a gray cast; peach warms the cheek and cool pink makes it sallow; green-leaning veins. The undertone test takes all three in order and says whether they point at warm undertones.
Can warm undertones change?
No, and that is what makes warm undertones worth establishing once. Undertone is the direction skin leans, and warm undertones will still be warm undertones in forty years — which is why the whole twelve-type system is built on that axis. Surface tone is a different thing and moves constantly with sun, flushing and the time of year, which is why a photo meant to establish warm undertones wants an ordinary day rather than the week after a holiday.
Which metal goes with warm undertones?
Gold and Gold or bright silver, depending on which of the 6 types you are. Across all 6 the answer points the same way, which makes metal one of the more reliable confirmations once you already suspect you are warm undertones.
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