Soft Summer · Makeup
Soft Summer makeup: foundation, blush and lip directions
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
No brand names appear below and this is not a Soft Summer shopping list. What it gives you is the direction each product has to take for Soft 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.
Soft Summer is cool with medium depth and muted chroma. For Soft Summer that means foundation answers to the undertone, blush and lip answer to undertone and depth together, and the eyes answer to chroma. Soft Summer sits at medium depth, which is the widest usable range of the twelve: most shades will work on it, and the ones that do not will be wrong on undertone rather than on strength.
Foundation: the one Soft Summer has to get exact
Soft Summer wants a cool-neutral, soft 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 Soft 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 Soft 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 Soft 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 Soft 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 Soft Summer carry more color than the rest of the face.
Blush
Dusty Rose and Mauve. Directions, not products. What they have in common is being cool shades at the right strength for medium 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 Soft Summer.
Keep a Soft Summer blush soft, because a clean, bright one reads as applied rather than as a flush and the giveaway is that you can see exactly where it stops.
Lip
Muted Rose, Dusty Berry and Soft Plum. The same idea again — the names say where a Soft Summer lip sits rather than what to buy — so recognize a muted 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 Soft Summer family or it does not:
- Muted Burgundy
- Deep Sage
- Soft Navy
- Dusty Plum
- Deep Muted Teal
- Dusty Rose
- Muted Teal
- Soft Plum
Eyes
Soft Summer wants soft, slightly dusty shades, blended rather than drawn: a hard black line sits on it as a separate object, where a softened brown or taupe one belongs to the face it is on.
Eyes with a slightly blended, dusty quality rather than a sharp one is what Soft 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 Soft Summer colors, and the shades to avoid with the reason for each, are in your report.
Are you actually Soft Summer?
Worth settling before you buy a foundation: a box marked cool-neutral, soft undertone is only useful if that is what Soft Summer actually is. The scan reads your undertone off a photo rather than off a guess at a counter, so a Soft Summer can buy a cool-neutral, soft undertone knowing it is theirs.
Questions
What foundation undertone does Soft Summer need?
Cool-neutral, soft undertone — and for Soft 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 Soft Summer match along the jaw in daylight rather than on the wrist.
What lip colors suit Soft Summer?
Muted Rose, Dusty Berry and Soft Plum 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 Soft Summer lip sits, which is what lets you recognize one in a range you have never used.
Is Soft Summer makeup different for men?
No. Undertone, depth and chroma have nothing to do with gender, so the Soft Summer shades are the Soft Summer shades whoever is wearing them. If a concealer or a tinted balm is as far as you go, the cool-neutral, soft undertone is the Soft Summer detail that matters and the rest of this page is reference.
Should I take the scan photo wearing Soft 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 Soft Summer.
More for Soft Summer
Soft Summer hair color · Soft Summer outfits · Soft Summer colors to avoid · Soft Summer in full