Light Summer · Makeup
Light Summer makeup: foundation, blush and lip directions
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
No brand names appear below and this is not a Light Summer shopping list. What it gives you is the direction each product has to take for Light Summer coloring — the part that survives a reformulation, a discontinued shade or a different country's stock, and the part nobody at a counter can tell you.
Light Summer is cool with light depth and moderate chroma. For Light Summer that means foundation answers to the undertone, blush and lip answer to undertone and depth together, and the eyes answer to chroma. Light Summer coloring is light, so pigment travels further than expected. A lip two shades below the Light Summer range stops being a lip and becomes the only thing anyone sees in a photograph.
Foundation: the one Light Summer has to get exact
Light Summer wants a cool, pink-neutral undertone. Every other shade on this page is a direction you can stray from by a step or two, and foundation is not: it covers more of your face than anything else and sits directly against the skin it is meant to vanish into, so a Light Summer face in a foundation one step off is visible across a table in daylight.
- Swatch along the jaw, where your face meets your neck — on most people the wrist is a different color from the face entirely, and Light Summer is no exception.
- Judge it at a window. Shop lighting is built to make products look good, which is a different job from making a Light Summer face look like itself.
- Give it ten minutes before deciding, because most foundations oxidise a little and settle warmer than they went on, which drags Light Summer toward an undertone it does not have.
- Between two shades, take the one that disappears at the jaw rather than the one that matches on the cheek, because cheeks on Light Summer carry more color than the rest of the face.
Blush
Soft Rose and Cool Pink. Directions, not products. What they have in common is being cool shades at the right strength for light coloring, which is why a blush that looks right on someone with similar skin can still land as a bruise or as nothing at all on Light Summer.
Either a clean or a softened finish works on Light Summer, so pick by the look you are after rather than by a rule.
Lip
Rose, Soft Berry and Mauve Pink. The same idea again — the names say where a Light Summer lip sits rather than what to buy — so recognize a rose across a counter and you can find your shade in any range anywhere.
Your palette is the cross-check. Hold a lipstick against these eight and it either belongs to the Light Summer family or it does not:
- Rose
- Cool Berry
- Slate Blue
- Orchid
- Soft Teal
- Cornflower Blue
- Soft Fuchsia
- Light Raspberry
Eyes
Light Summer can take either approach. Defined when you want Light Summer eyes to carry the look, blended when you want them to sit back, and neither will fight the rest of the face.
Eyes that read as clear without being striking is what Light Summer coloring usually comes with, and the eye makeup that works is the kind that agrees with that rather than arguing with it.
All twenty-five Light Summer colors, and the shades to avoid with the reason for each, are in your report.
Are you actually Light Summer?
Worth settling before you buy a foundation: a box marked cool, pink-neutral undertone is only useful if that is what Light Summer actually is. The scan reads your undertone off a photo rather than off a guess at a counter, so a Light Summer can buy a cool, pink-neutral undertone knowing it is theirs.
Questions
What foundation undertone does Light Summer need?
Cool, pink-neutral undertone — and for Light Summer that phrase is the most useful thing on this page, because foundation is the one product that prints its undertone on the box and still gets picked by eye under a shop light. Test a Light Summer match along the jaw in daylight rather than on the wrist.
What lip colors suit Light Summer?
Rose, Soft Berry and Mauve Pink are the directions to look in. None of those are products and none of them are the only option — they say where on the wheel a Light Summer lip sits, which is what lets you recognize one in a range you have never used.
Is Light Summer makeup different for men?
No. Undertone, depth and chroma have nothing to do with gender, so the Light Summer shades are the Light Summer shades whoever is wearing them. If a concealer or a tinted balm is as far as you go, the cool, pink-neutral undertone is the Light Summer detail that matters and the rest of this page is reference.
Should I take the scan photo wearing Light Summer makeup?
Better not to. The analysis reads your skin, and foundation is another undertone painted over yours — usually a warmer, more neutral one than you are, because that is what sells — so a made-up photo can come back as a neighbor rather than as Light Summer.
More for Light Summer
Light Summer hair color · Light Summer outfits · Light Summer colors to avoid · Light Summer in full