How your skin tone can pick the best colours for your wardrobe

We all have preferred colours for our clothes and makeup, but when it comes down to it, many of us don’t really know if these colours actually suit us.

These few tips will help you understand what shades will accentuate your eyes, skin and hair the most and will make you look your absolute best.

What many people don’t realise is that colouring isn’t just linked to what people enjoy wearing, but rather the undertones of colour in people’s skin. We spoke to Donna Cameron, a personal style specialist in Melbourne, to discuss how to best match your clothing to your skin tones.

“It’s important when choosing colours to ensure you are the star of the show and that the colours you wear support you rather than stealing your limelight,” said Donna.

According to Donna, “the blink test can be helpful in determining if a colour is too vivid for you. If you stand in front of a mirror and close your eyes for a while, then open them, observe what you see; is it you or is it the colour? If it’s the colour, it’s too bright for you.”

Donna says that the key is to select colours that are as light and bright as possible without overpowering you. Colour can be used cleverly to direct attention where you want it and to shift it away from where you don’t. Most of us want to direct attention upwards to our face rather than elsewhere and you can do this by choosing colours that don’t steal the show,” Donna shared.

“However, nor do you want colours that look drab and dreary as they will have two negative impacts:

• They’ll appear visually heavy and potentially give the impression that you are too, and
• They’ll cast dark shadows onto your face, making you look more tired and less vital than you really are”.

According to Donna, there are two colours every person can wear flawlessly, without worrying about whether they’ll clash with your skin or body; your hair colour and your eye colour.

If you have blue eyes and silver hair, you can seamlessly wear blue and silver without a care in the world! They’ll always work!

However, if you want to venture away from these colours, you need to know what skin tone base you have, Donna reckons. She also shares that “If your eyes are blue, they will really pop if you wear blue. This is because harmonising with your natural colouring always looks right.”

This can be tricky and multi-faceted though, as Donna adds “Also, if your hair is one solid colour and your skin is fairly even-toned, plain colours will sit well on you. If your hair is several shades of blonde or brown or you’re salt and pepper, chances are you’ll look better in prints than in solid colours. Again, this is about harmonising.”

Donna shared that people can have a warm undertone, or a cool undertone. Once you know the difference between the two, it’s hard not to notice it with everyone that you look at.

You can easily identify your undertone in three ways.

The first, most common way to identify, is to check the veins on the inner side of your wrist. If they are blue-tinted you are more likely to be cool-toned and if they are a greenish colour, you’re warm-toned.

How your skin reacts in the sun can also tell you a lot. Warm tones will eventually brown and tan when exposed to the sun’s rays while cool tones will turn red and burn.

Additionally, Donna has indicated that the final way to check your natural palette is to assess your hair skin and eye colours to see if they correspond more with warmer or cooler tones. She says:

“If you know anything about art, you’ve probably met the colour wheel and know that there are warm colours and cool colours. Can you determine whether you have predominantly warm or cool colouring? You can attempt this by looking at your skin, hair and eye colour to see if they correlate with colours on the warm or the cool side of the wheel.

“As a general rule, redheads and golden blondes (assuming the hair colour is natural or works with the complexion) will be warm. Black, white, platinum blonde or grey hair are all cool. There are numerous shades of brown so brunettes can be either warm or cool.

“Skin colour can be more difficult for the average person to analyse. Despite what you may have heard, there are no rules for ethnicities; Asian, African, Latino or Caucasian people can all be either warm or cool.

“Once you’ve determined your colour ‘temperature’, ideally, you’d stick to wearing garments that reflect your own colour temperature. This principle can enhance your appearance massively and you can co-ordinate colours with more confidence.

“Once you have identified this, you can move onto what colours you should be looking for.”

By being aware of your undertones you can create outfits that will accentuate your skin, hair and eyes without even trying!

We’ve summarised an easy list to help you determine if you’re cool or warm toned below:

Cool toned

Natural hair colours: black, or brunette.
Natural eye colours: dark green, dark hazel, brown or dark blue eyes
Natural skin colour: usually quite pale, and goes red after sun

Warm toned

Natural hair colours: chestnut, copper brown, golden blonde, red or auburn
Natural eye colours: hazel, brown, light green or light blue
Natural skin colour: usually tans after sun exposure