A skin undertone test with an optional photo check
Your skin undertone is the colour under the surface of your skin — warm (golden or peachy), cool (pink or bluish), neutral (a balance of both) or olive (a green-grey cast). It is not the same as how light or dark your skin is: fair and deep skin can both be warm, cool, neutral or olive. Undertone is what people mean when they say gold jewellery or a cream shirt “suits” someone.
This free skin undertone test asks six quick questions — the classic vein, jewellery, sun and white-versus-off-white tests among them — and shows your likely undertone with how confident the answers are, plus colours, metals and whites to try. If you like, add a photo: you choose a patch of skin and a patch of white paper, and the page measures the colour in your browser without uploading anything.
How to use the Skin Undertone Test
- Stand by a window in daylight, with no makeup on the areas you look at.
- Answer at least four of the six questions; “Not sure” is fine for the rest.
- Read your undertone, the confidence wording and the cool-to-warm bar, and browse the colours to try.
- Optional: choose a daylight photo with white printer paper in it. Click bare skin for the skin patch, then click the paper.
- Compare the photo reading with the quiz, then copy your result or continue to the full season quiz.
Skin Undertone Test features
Four results
Warm, cool, neutral or olive, with wording that says how clear the signs are.
Classic tests in one place
Vein colour, gold vs silver, sun reaction, white vs off-white, the white-paper test and foundation shade.
Photo check with colour correction
A white-paper patch removes the colour cast of the light and the camera before the skin is measured.
Shows its working
The photo reading lists L*, a*, b* and the hue angle, and warns about clipped or uneven patches.
Private
No upload or account — the photo is analysed in this page.
Skin undertone meaning and the classic tests
Beauty brands and stylists use the same handful of checks. Skin undertone veins: in daylight, veins that look blue or purple suggest cool, green suggests warm, and a mix suggests neutral; greenish veins with a grey or brown tinge are often described for olive skin. Jewellery: silver and platinum tend to flatter cool undertones, yellow gold warm ones, and neutral and olive skin can usually wear both. White paper held by the face makes cool skin look pinker, warm skin look more golden and olive skin look slightly green or grey.
None of these tests is reliable alone — vein colour depends on skin thickness and light, and jewellery preference is partly taste — so the quiz adds them up. Each answer moves a cool-to-warm score, and some count as neutral or olive cues. Three or more olive cue points give olive; a score close to the middle gives neutral; otherwise the side of the scale gives warm or cool, described as a slight lean, fairly clear or strong.
How the photo check works
The page averages the pixels inside the skin patch and converts them from sRGB to CIELAB, the colour space used in skin research, where a* measures redness and b* yellowness. Their balance is the hue angle, h = atan2(b*, a*): a lower angle means pinker skin, a higher one more yellow. The page calls under 52° cool-leaning and over 64° warm-leaning; these cut-offs are its own, not a published standard.
Cameras and room lights tint everything, so a white sheet of paper in the same light is used as a reference: each colour channel (in linear RGB) is scaled until the paper is neutral grey, and the same correction is applied to the skin. In a study of four ethnic groups, Xiao and colleagues (Skin Research and Technology, 2017) found the biggest differences in yellowness (b*) and that redness varies by body site — the forehead most, the inner arm least — which is why the jaw, neck or inner arm make better patches than the cheeks. Sun exposure also lowers the hue angle (Jiang et al., Vision Research, 2022), so a tan can look cooler in the numbers than you are.
Using your undertone
Warm undertones usually suit earthy and golden colours — coral, mustard, olive, camel, cream. Cool undertones suit jewel tones and blue-based colours — navy, emerald, fuchsia, bright white. Neutral undertones can wear most mid-tones, and olive skin often glows in deep teal, forest green, burgundy and gold. For foundation, match the undertone first (pink, yellow, neutral or olive base) and then the depth. Your undertone is one of three traits in seasonal colour analysis; the personal color analysis quiz adds depth and clarity. For glasses and hair ideas, see the face shape detector, and for hair colour mixes the hair dye ratio calculator.
Skin Undertone Test FAQ
How do I know my skin undertone?
Look at the veins on your wrist in daylight, compare gold and silver jewellery, and hold white paper next to your bare face. This skin undertone test combines those and three more questions into a warm, cool, neutral or olive result.
What if my veins are both blue and green?
That usually points to a neutral undertone. Answer the other questions too — they decide between neutral, olive and a slight warm or cool lean.
What is an olive undertone?
Olive skin has a green-grey cast on top of a neutral-to-warm undertone. Many foundations look too pink or too orange on it, and both gold and silver jewellery can work.
Can my undertone change?
Undertone stays broadly the same, but a tan, redness, skin conditions and lighting change how your skin looks on the surface, so results can shift between summer and winter.
Is the photo check accurate?
It is only as good as the light and the camera. Use daylight, no filters, and include white paper so the colour cast can be corrected; even then, treat the reading as a hint next to the quiz.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The photo is drawn on a canvas and measured in your browser.