Your friends have told you a million times that bright yellow shirt your girlfriend got you makes you look like an idiot; and even though you look like Big Bird on fire, you’re still not willing to part with it.
Wearing colors that just don’t flatter will make you look washed out and tired, even if you’ve had a good eight hours of sleep.
Finding colors that suit you and don’t clash are an important part of presenting yourself as a stylish man and we here at EveryGuyed are going to help you never look like a giant rainbow mess ever again.
Determining your Skin Tone
Every person has a natural undertone and it can usually be divided into three categories – warm, cool and neutral. Determining your skin’s undertone can be as simple as these couples of steps.
Sit in front of a mirror and make sure you have plenty of natural light.
From there, you should be able to obviously see what tone your skin naturally emits.
There are also a number of other tricks to help you determine what your skin tone is, like if your skin looks better against silver jewellery, chances are you have a cool undertone. If it looks better against gold jewellery, you have a warm undertone.
Darker skin tones tend to have warmer undertones like olive and gold and fairer skin tones have more pink and cooler undertones.
Once you figure out what undertone you have, you’re ready to move on to better and wiser fashion choices.
Every person has a natural undertone and it can usually be divided into three categories – warm, cool and neutral.
Color and Your Skin Tone
If you have a golden or olive skin tone, you’ll want to stick towards warm colors.
The correlation here is warm skin tones mean warm colors, and cooler skin tones mean cool colors.
However, that’s not to say that if you want to wear that purple pullover you now can’t. It’s more of a guideline to help you pick colors that will complement your skin.
Because each color has different shades to it, these shades may suit your specific skin tones. For example purple can be a plum, lavender or magenta. Lavender would look better on someone with a cooler skin tone whereas a darker and rich plum would look best on a warmer skin tone.
So don’t worry, we’re not completely eliminating your colorful wardrobe.
The correlation here is warm skin tones mean warm colors, and cooler skin tones mean cool colors.
Warm Skin Tones
Like we said, warmer skin tones like olive or gold tend to look better suited in warmer colors. Reds, golds, oranges, yellows, camels, dark browns all look great on your skin type.
Next time you’re shopping for a pullover, why not try a rich red or dark orange?
Complimenting your skin tone will not only do your complexion and overall appearance good, but could guarantee you that cute girl’s phone number.
Neutral Skin Tones
All we can say, is you, sir, are the envy of everyone around you. Usually most neutral skin tones will sway to either warm or cold, but overall you can pretty much wear any color your little heart desires.
Our hat is off to you if you want to wear that terribly bright pink shirt because we can’t. And you’ll look good. Real good.
Cool Skin Tones
If you’ve determined that you’re a cooler skin tone that falls within the pinks, blues and purples, colder colors will look best on you. That being said, purples, blues, greens and pinks look great with your skin.
Why not try a purple dress shirt with your grey suit for a pop of color that brightens your overall appearance? So when you walk into your office Monday morning looking bright and chipper, you can thank this skin color guide for those extra compliments.
Summary
- Everyone has a natural skin tone and once you’ve determined yours through our simple mirror test, you can figure out what colors are best suited for your skin.
- Warm skin tones should lean towards warmer and richer colors like reds, oranges, yellows and dark browns.
- Cooler skin tones should lean towards cooler colors like purples, greens and blues.
- Neutral skin tones are lucky enough to be able to wear almost any color, so if you’re one of the few, we are envious.
Comments?
Confused about how to find your undertone? Don’t know if you’re a warm, cool or neutral skin tone? We’re here to help.
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I’m a dark-skinned African-American male. Does that make me a “cool” skin tone?
Hey Jasher,
That really depends on how light or dark your skin tone might me. If your skin is darker, you’re more than likely a warm skin tone. Trial and error is usually the best way to figure it out, unfortunately.
Hope this helped.
hi, nice article but can you give us an example of these skin colors
Could you give a few more examples of colours that will fit warm tones? And is there a possibility of a pictoral “tone chart” that your readers can compare themselves to? Maybe place your proposed shades of colour next to each selected tone, so we can see for ourselves how great they look? It’d be a great help.
Actually, nix my comment on mint. Mint can look really gorgeous on a lot of warm toned people. Notably blondes.