What Is My Undertone? 8 At-Home Tests, Ranked by What They Actually Show
Your undertone is the steady color cast under your skin’s surface: warm (golden or peachy), cool (pink or blue-red), neutral (no clear lean) or olive (a muted, green-gray cast). The most useful home test is holding a warm color and a cool color of the same depth at your bare jawline in window light and seeing which one lets your skin keep its own depth and warmth. The checklist below turns that and three other tests into a score. The vein test, the one you will see everywhere, is one of the weakest.
Undertone is separate from how light or dark your skin is, so any depth of skin can be warm, cool, neutral or olive. A loosely related idea appears in computer vision: a 2023 paper measured skin lightness and hue, from red to yellow, as separate dimensions in face images. It does not study undertone or these four labels, so the styling categories remain convention.
One limit worth stating plainly: we did not find a published study that checks any of these home tests against instrument readings. The ranking below is our reasoning about what each test actually measures. It is not a measured accuracy score. Undertone labels and seasonal color analysis are styling guidance, not science. Researchers have noted that these categories “are not defined scientifically, and advised colours are inconsistent” (Perrett and Sprengelmeyer, 2021, in a study of 12 White women’s faces, which did not test seasonal systems).
Before you start
- Stand facing a window in daylight, away from direct sun. Avoid warm bulbs, which push everything golden.
- Use bare skin, with no foundation, bronzer or blush. Pull hair back from your face.
- Wear a plain white or gray top, or drape a white towel over your shoulders, so a bright shirt does not color your skin.
- Skip the test if you are sunburned, freshly tanned, or having a skin flare-up. Those can read as an undertone.
8 undertone tests, ranked by our reasoning
| Rank and test | Our judgment | What it really shows | Where it misleads | On deeper skin | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Same-depth color drape | Most useful, in our view | Compares a warm and a cool color directly against your face, which is the question you actually want answered. | Colors that differ in depth as well as temperature. Use the matched pairs below. | Works at any depth. Look for skin that stays even versus skin that turns gray or ashy. | 3 each, two pairs |
| 2. White paper at the jawline | Most useful, in our view | Puts a plain reference beside skin so its yellow, pink or green cast is easier to see. | Sunburn, acne, rosacea or a fresh tan can look like an undertone. Paper brightness varies a little. | Works, but white is a strong contrast. Read the color cast and ignore how dark or light skin looks next to it. | 2 |
| 3. White versus cream fabric | Reasonable, in our view | A smaller version of the drape: one cool-leaning neutral against one warm-leaning neutral. | The difference is subtle, so ties are common. Shiny or yellowed fabric throws it off. | Works at any depth. A tie is a usable result. | 2 |
| 4. Gold versus silver | Limited, in our view | Metal may cast a slight tint, but mostly you are judging preference. | Small surface, and it is easy to choose the metal you already like. Plated pieces vary in color. | Works at any depth, but it is only a small sample. | 1 |
| 5. A foundation that already matches | Useful if you have one, in our view | A shade that disappears at your jawline tells you which base your skin accepts. | Brands label warm, cool and neutral differently, so the label alone means little. | Depends on the shade range sold near you. | Not scored |
| 6. Natural hair and eye color | Weak, in our view | A loose association at best. | Plenty of exceptions, and hair is often colored. | No better or worse by depth. | Not scored |
| 7. Sun response | Weak, in our view | How skin reacts to UV, not its color cast. | Burning and tanning have more to do with how much melanin skin makes. Do not sunbathe to test this. | Not useful. | Not scored |
| 8. Wrist veins | Weak, in our view | Optics. A 1996 study in Applied Optics attributed vein color to how skin scatters and absorbs light, blood oxygenation, vessel size and depth, and how the eye perceives color. | The study did not look at undertone, and we found no evidence that vein color tracks it. A blue-green reading can be argued either way. | Veins are harder to see on deeper skin, so the test can fail outright. | Not scored |
Phone photos and selfie apps are not on the list because automatic white balance changes skin color from shot to shot, so two photos taken minutes apart can disagree.
Compare colors of the same depth
A warm item and a cool item that differ in depth can mislead you, because you may be reacting to how dark the color is. These pairs are matched on CIELAB lightness (L*, where 0 is black and 100 is white), which we calculated from the hex codes, so the main thing left to compare is warm against cool.
| Sample | Warm side | Cool side | Lightness (L*) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coral #E2725B | Cool pink #DB6E96 | L*: 61 and 60 | |
| Moss #7B7A3A | Medium blue #4E72B0 | L*: 50 and 48 | |
| Burnt orange #B7691E | Orchid #9C65B8 | L*: 52 and 52 |
Screens are not fabric, so use the swatches to find something close in your closet: a scarf, a T-shirt, a towel. If you have nothing close, pick any warm and cool item that look about equally dark to you with your eyes half closed.
Score your undertone
Do the tests in order and tick an answer for each. The running totals update as you go, nothing is sent anywhere, and you can change any answer. “Better” means your skin keeps its own depth and warmth instead of turning gray, ashy or yellow next to the color. Ignore features the color cannot change, and which color you like more. The point weights are our own judgment, based on the ranking above.
Screen reader users: the running totals may not be announced, so add up the points shown beside each test by hand.
Check in this order and stop at the first line that fits:
- Two olive ticks, plus warm and cool within 4 of each other: Olive. Otherwise read the points first, and note a possible olive lean if you have any olive ticks.
- Warm plus cool is 3 or less: too few answers. Try again in other daylight.
- Warm is at least 3 higher than cool: Warm.
- Cool is at least 3 higher than warm: Cool.
- Otherwise: Neutral, which is a real result and not a failed test.
What your result means
These colors are starting points to try near your face, at any depth of skin. Any color can still be worn: if you love one outside your range, put it in trousers, a skirt or shoes, or wear a flattering layer between it and your face.
Cool
Clothing: blue-based reds, plum, navy, cobalt and crisp white. Jewelry: silver, white gold and platinum, and rose gold is often suggested too. Hair: ash brown, cool black, blue-black, or platinum and silvery blondes. Colored Hair Care warns that brassy blondes and orange reds can make cool skin look ruddy. Compare True Summer and True Winter.
Warm
Clothing: cream instead of stark white, camel, terracotta, mustard and olive. Jewelry: yellow gold, bronze and copper. Hair: golden blonde, honey brown, caramel, copper or warm chestnut. Colored Hair Care says ashy blondes and cool blacks can look gray or flat on warm skin. Compare True Spring and True Autumn. For warm neutrals in outfits, see what colors go with brown.
Neutral
Clothing: most colors work, so how bright or muted a color is, and how deep it is, matters more than whether it is warm or cool. Jewelry: gold, silver, or both at once. Hair: natural brown, mushroom brown, bronde, soft balayage or muted auburn. Compare Soft Summer and Soft Autumn.
Olive
Clothing: earthy tones, deep greens and teal, and off-whites. Very yellow colors can be the hard ones to wear near the face. Jewelry: yellow gold is the usual suggestion, but compare it with silver, since olive skin can lean either way. Hair: ColorProof favors honey, caramel, chestnut and warm browns and warns that icy platinum and flat ash can look sallow, but also lists ash and mushroom brown for olive skin that leans cool. Advice here is less settled than for the other groups, so ask a colorist for a strand test before a big change. Compare Soft Autumn and Deep Autumn.
If your tests disagree
Trust the drapes over the metal and the veins. If the two drapes agree and only gold versus silver differs, keep the drape result. If the drapes split, you are probably neutral or near a boundary, and how muted or bright a color is will tell you more than temperature will.
What to do with the result
Undertone is one of three things seasonal color analysis looks at, along with depth and clarity. Take the color palette quiz to find which of the 12 color seasons fits, or the hair color quiz if a color change is what you are planning. To try a specific color on your own clothes, the guides to outfit color combinations and what colors go with burgundy use the same daylight approach.