Warm vs cool undertone: the complete guide to all four types

Warm undertones have a golden, yellow or peachy cast, cool undertones have a pink or bluish cast, neutral is a balance of both, and olive adds a green or grey-green note. Your undertone sits beneath the surface of your skin and does not change with the seasons, which makes it a reliable guide for clothes, jewelry and colour choices.

This guide explains all four types, shows what usually flatters each, and clears up the confusion that trips most people up.

What is a skin undertone?

Your skin has two layers of colour for our purposes. The surface tone is how light or deep you look, and it moves with sun exposure, season and even how tired you are. The undertone is the quiet colour underneath, and it stays the same for life.

Because the two are independent, a very fair person can be warm and a very deep person can be cool. Depth tells you nothing about undertone, so treat them as separate questions.

If you have not worked out yours yet, start with the five simple undertone tests and come back here.

Warm undertone

Warm skin carries a golden, yellow or peachy glow. In daylight you may notice that green veins show on your wrist, that gold jewelry looks natural, and that you tan fairly easily.

Colours that usually flatter warm undertones are earthy and sunny, because they echo the gold in the skin:

• Cream and ivory instead of stark white
• Camel and warm browns
• Olive green and moss
• Terracotta and rust
• Coral and peach

Cool undertone

Cool skin has a pink, rosy or slightly blue cast. Wrist veins often look blue or purple, silver tends to look crisp, and the skin may flush pink or burn before it tans.

Cool undertones usually do well with clear, slightly icy or jewel-like shades:

• Navy and deep blue
• Charcoal and cool greys
• Ice blue and lavender
• Emerald and cool teal
• Fuchsia and berry

Neutral undertone

Neutral means the warm and cool signals roughly cancel out. Gold and silver both look fine, the veins seem a mix of blue and green, and you may look equally good in a warm coral and a cool pink.

That gives you flexibility, but it also means the quality of a colour matters more than its temperature. Soft, muted, slightly greyed shades are a safe place to begin:

• Dusty rose
• Sage
• Taupe

Very saturated colours at either extreme can overpower you, so hold them near your face before you commit.

Olive undertone

Olive is the one people most often get wrong. It has a green or grey-green cast that can be hidden by yellow or pink on the surface. On the white paper test, skin can look slightly ashy or greenish, and many olive people tan easily.

Deep, rich, earthy shades tend to work well:

• Forest green
• Burgundy
• Earth brown
• Teal

There is more to say about this type, so it has its own page: what an olive undertone is and which colours suit it.

The four types side by side

This table is a starting point, not a rulebook. Individual faces vary.

For more on metals, see gold or silver jewelry for your skin.

How undertone connects to seasonal colour analysis

You may have heard of the twelve seasons used in colour analysis. The idea is that your undertone, how light or deep you are, and how much contrast or brightness you carry together place you in one group, such as a soft autumn or a bright winter.

Undertone is the first step because it sets whether you lean to the warm or the cool half. Depth and contrast then refine the choice. You do not need the full system to benefit, since knowing warm, cool, neutral or olive already narrows your options a great deal.

Common mix-ups

Undertone is not surface tone. Light skin is not automatically cool and dark skin is not automatically warm.

Sun does not change your undertone. A tan darkens and warms the surface for a while. Test on skin that has not been in the sun lately.

Makeup can mislead you. Foundation and self-tanner colour the surface, so check your undertone on bare skin in daylight.

Hair and eye colour are only hints. Dyed hair in particular can point the wrong way.

Black is not a neutral answer for everyone. It is a strong colour, and how it sits near your face depends on your undertone. See does black suit you for how to handle it.

Where Kittyfit fits in

Kittyfit gives you a result in four categories: warm, cool, neutral and olive. You answer a short quiz, and you can add face and wrist photos that are analysed on your iPhone. The app then scores clothes and jewelry against your undertone, and an optional virtual try-on is there if you want it. Take a look at the app.