Your Color Style

Warm Undertones

March 22, 2019 Jen Thoden Season 1 Episode 5
Your Color Style
Warm Undertones
Show Notes Transcript

Determining your undertones is a hot topic in color analysis. Most people believe that it’s the magic pill to figuring out what colors you should wear. I think that learning your undertones helps you know what colors to avoid. 

In this episode we take a deep dive into understanding warm undertones. How do you know if you have warm undertones... what does that actually mean... what colors you should wear and what colors to avoid.

Please visit Your Color Style to discover more info and products on learning your best colors. And please email support@yourcolorstyle.com with any comments or questions you may have.




Speaker 1:

Welcome to the your color style podcast where we believe the more you know about color, the more you'll know what colors flatter you best. I'm your host Jen[inaudible]. We are continuing the series on the your color style color analysis methodology. And the last few episodes we've talked about chroma and bright versus soft and how those characteristics of color applied to your color type and the colors that you wear. So if you haven't listened to those, go back and do that because they're really foundational to the next few episodes in this series. So today we're going to talk about undertones. So what is, what does that mean? What is undertones? Undertones is by definition, it's the coloring that is just underneath your skin and it directly affects your overall coloring. Determining your undertones is really a hot topic in color analysis.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people believe that this is like the magic pill to figuring out what colors you should wear. Um, I'm usually, I'm a little bit on the opposite end of that and that I, I believe that understanding your undertones really kind of helps you avoid certain colors because there are so many colors to choose from. So when you look at a color wheel and you understand the types of colors you can wear, I mean it's really almost endless and slight variations in each. And so to tell you that you can wear these colors is really helpful. But what I find most helpful is learning the colors to avoid because those are the colors that are going to make you look tired. They're going to enhance the shadows under your eyes. They might make your skin look a little gray or green or they just may wash you out. So the goal here is for you to learn what your undertones are and so that you can learn what colors to just avoid. And that opens you up to lots of choices and really for you to focus on the colors that you just really, really love and love to wear. So for undertones, there are warm undertones, cool undertones. And what a lot of people refer to as neutral. And would that, we'll go into that in depth in a future episode because it's, it's something that really confuses people and a lot of people who fill or neutral really may not be as neutral as they think. So we're going to get into that. So for this episode we're going to be talking specifically about warm undertones, how, you know, if you do have warm undertones, what colors you can wear and most importantly, what colors you should avoid. So how do you know if you have warm undertones? All right. So for lighter skin individuals, your skin is going to either have a peachy yellow or golden quality to it. Um, the color peach will look great on you. I've yet to meet someone with warm undertones, with lighter skin that doesn't look good in pH. Even if you don't like the color, it's a color that really picks up those warm orangy peachy qualities of your skin. And it looks really good with um, golden qualities as well for darker skin individuals. Uh, for that darker Brown skin, you still have a golden quality about your skin. It's not going to have a blue or red cast to it. It's going to really, um, have a golden hint to it. Gold is going to gold, whether it's metal or the color gold is really going to make you glow. Like you've got darker golden skin wearing. Um, a gold dress like for an evening would be amazing. Okay, so gold jewelry as well as going to look fantastic on you and silver on darker skin women, it's not going to look nearly as nice as the gold will. All right. Your eyes can also be a clue if it's too hard to see with your skin. Take a look at your eyes. This is not necessarily a hard rule, but it's still a really good guideline and can really help you. So warm eyes might be, you might have green eyes, golden Brown, and those are the kind of eyes that when you, they're usually um, medium to deep Brown. But when the, when sun hits them, you're going to see a golden quality in them. My daughter has golden Brown eyes and they look just simply Brown. But when the light hits them, you see a lot of yellow and golden quality on them. I've also seen that in Hazel eyes, warm Hazel eyes and warm almost green Hazel eyes. When the sun hits them, you see this, you see this golden golden quality about them and those are really, really warm eyes and it's unlikely that someone with cool undertones is going to have eyes like that. You may also have green, blue or blue green eyes, kind of a mix of eyes. Those are very similar to I have. Um, they sometimes look, uh, more green than blue. Just really depends on what you're wearing, but it's a blend of those colors. Typically true blue eyes are not on someone with warm undertones, but that rule can always be broken. Someone that has warm coppery, red hair and blue eyes may still have warm undertones. So again, these are just guidelines. Your hair color can really influence your color palette. It doesn't necessarily influence your undertones. But the enter tones in some time in some ways is just one factor when if you've colored your hair that's um, in a way almost the opposite of your undertones, then you will really affect the colors that you can wear. But even so, if just for natural hair color, when you're looking for someone with warm undertones and you're looking for someone that has a golden blonde hair, golden Brown hair, Brown hair, that as it hits the sun might have a cold and quality to it. And even the strawberry blonde hair and coppery red hair, Auburn hair, all typically be on someone with warm undertones. Not always. I have seen strawberry blonde hair on someone with cool undertones. So again, not hard rules, but I'm hoping that this at least gives you some ideas. One of the things that could confuse things is white, gray hair and white hair. So I've mentioned a lot of qualities here, but I don't want to leave out the women that have gray or white hair. And this is both for lighter skinned women and for darker skinned women, that gray hair can really confuse things because that means you're losing pigment in your hair and usually last a pigment will cool you down. But everybody's skin changes as they age, different at different times in their hair. So your hair may go great but you still may have a lot of warmth in your skin and so you have to kind of look at the whole picture at that point to really understand if someone is truly warm or they've cooled off of. Just recently I met a woman, we went to this winery and she was the poor of the wine, a older woman and she had what you first would describe as white hair. But as I'm talking to her, cause I'm always looking at people and secretly analyzing their colors and as I'm looking at her I realized that she is warm, she has a golden quality to her skin. She has these warm, really pretty light green eyes and her hair when I, after looking at it further isn't white. It, it's, you can just call it white. But had like a yellow cast to it. So you know, just putting someone in the bucket of, Oh, if you have white hair, you're this, you're this color type is isn't always true. And when I looked at her, I realized that she was very warm. So that was, I thought, I found that really, really interesting in seasonal color analysis, people with red hair are often put into the categories of spring and autumn. That means that they have warm undertones. But again, I have analyzed women that have natural red hair and happened to have cool undertones. So you gotta be really careful by just pulling hair and going, Oh, that's, that's warm. So it must be warm undertones gotta look at the whole person. Okay,

Speaker 1:

I'll get back to talking about warm undertones in a moment. If you've been trying to figure out what colors flatter you best put all that information out there is confusing. Consider having a professional color analysis. We, we all don't fit into a nice and neat category and that could be incredibly confusing and frustrating here at your color style. We don't do seasonal color analysis. We analyze your natural coloring and tone and then tell you what types of colors look best on you. So don't spend one more dollar on clothes that don't look good on you or even feel right. Let us help you sign up for professional color analysis today. Visit[inaudible] dot com and click on color analysis at the top of the page.

Speaker 3:

[inaudible].

Speaker 2:

There are a few myths out there about determining your your undertones that I honestly don't completely agree with. So the first one is vain color. This one confuses everyone. I get questions like my veins are blue, but I'm pretty sure I have warm undertones. I prefer, I personally can't tell what color my veins are. I get why people like this rule. I mean if your skin is very yellow, your veins will look green because the, your veins are blue and then the yellow on top of it makes them look green. But like for darker skin women, they, they can't use this rule. It doesn't work the same way. So we exclude women of color right away and we talk about the vain test. Olive skin tone. Women can't use this rule either because they already have kind of a green, um, coloring to their skin. So looking at their veins doesn't really tell them whether or not they're warm or cool. So I'm just really not a fan. I think the only people that can use the vein test are really fair. People who are ex are in the extremes, like very, very light with like yellow skin. Good. We'll give you green veins and very porcelain. Pale skin might give you blue veins that, that's kind of the, the, the rule of thumb. But I, I'm just not a fan of, of looking at veins, silver versus gold. I've seen this all the time. Oh, well, you know, just if you can wear silver, then you have cool undertones. And if you can wear a gold, you have warm undertones. And I even just mentioned that up, you know, earlier on in this episode about wearing gold. But that's not necessarily true. People with warm undertones that have lighter skin can easily wear silver and gold and in some cases put people with cool undertones can also wear gold. Not nearly as likely. But, um, if you're able to wear silver, it doesn't mean you automatically have cool undertones. People with more barcodes can definitely wear silver. So again, don't really love the silver versus gold test. Okay. Being able to burn versus tanning easily. Here's my take on this. Everyone is different. Being able to tan does not mean automatically that you have warm or cool undertones. We leave out the Brown skinned and olive skin tone. Women, when we talk about burning versus tanning, there are plenty of women that have darker skin. They have cool undertones and others that have woman or tones. And it's not about being able to tan easily or burn easily. So it, I mean it is true that someone that has like porcelain skin with cool undertones probably doesn't tan. So that's, that's a true statement. But someone with warm undertones that's, that's fair can also burn easily. So again, I don't really like this rule. We exclude a lot of people in this rule and I don't think it really, I can't give confidence when someone says they burn easily if they're warm or cool. It's not enough information for me. Warm undertones. The colors that will help you know if you have women or tones. So do your own little personal draping here. Okay? Lipstick. You could try a tomato red or a coral type lipstick and see if that looks good on you. Because if you have warm under, if you have cool undertones, coral lipstick for example, is gone. It's going to look awful on you is going to completely wrong. So we're looking for colors that are really polarizing here. A peach orangy red and golden yellow are colors that are going to flatter you if you have warm undertones. You don't have to love wearing them, but they're not going to be off putting either. So look, really looking for those warm tones. All right, color is that you can wear that really don't tell you whether you're warm or core are those universal colors? So I hear a lot of times when someone says, well, I'm, I can't, you know, I can wear a blue, but, but I've been told that I have warm undertones. Well of course you can wear blue because blue is a universal color. So what are those universal colors? They are true red, true yellow, green, blue, and purple. Those colors on the color wheel, as long as the true balanced colors are, will look good on anyone. Whether regardless if you have water tones or cool undertones, okay? Those are just universal colors. Now it is possible that you're like, why can't wear blue? But it's, it's possible that the reason that you say that you can't wear these colors cause they might be too bright, okay? Someone who is soft that looks best in muted colors is not gonna look great in a true yellow, okay. Or they're gonna look more in, look better in a muted yellow. Whether it's kind of like a dirty great quality to it or maybe more of like an olive green type of yellow, yellow with a little black added to it. Okay? So don't just dismiss those universal colors. It could be they're too bright or they're too soft for you depending on, so you've gotta make sure that you're finding the right chroma level and those colors. But[inaudible] true red, true yellow, green, blue, and purple, which is a lot of colors will look good on anyone. All right. So those aren't going to tell you whether you have warm or cool undertones. If you have warm undertones, the colors to avoid would be a blue purple. Okay? So there's just true purple. And then there's purple that has like a blue quality to it that typically is not going to work well on you magenta, which is really um, more of pink with a little blue attitude. It, it's a more of a cool pink if you will not gonna look good on someone with woman or tones and pale gray, like not necessarily charcoal gray or deeper gray because those can be worn really well with people, with woman or tones, but that pale gray isn't going to look, typically will not look good on anyone with warm undertones. Okay, so blue, purple, magenta, Pell, gray, avoid those. If you have warmer motor tones won't do much for you. We'll kinda make you look a little tired more than anything. I hope this was helpful to you and you now know whether or not you have warm undertones. And if nothing that I've talked about fits you at this point, it's possible. You have cool or neutral undertones. So you're gonna want to listen to the next episode in the series so you can learn a little bit more about that. So next week on the your color style podcast, we're going to continue this series on the your color style methodology, and we're going to be talking about cool undertones. If you're trying to figure out your color type, take the quiz@yourcolorstyle.com slash quiz it's free, and it will walk you through step by step with photos to help you figure out what colors will flatter you best. Thank you so much for listening to the your color style podcast, where we believe the more you know about color, the more you'll know

Speaker 3:

[inaudible].