The first step in choosing the best mineral makeup for your skin is to determine your shade. That is how fair or dark your skin color is. Below is a general guideline of skin shades based on your natural hair color, of course this is only a basic guide so use your natural hair color to find the best foundation match.
Choosing Your Shade
- Redheads -usually have very fair or light skin tone
- Blondes -usually have a fair skin to light – medium skin tone
- Light Brunettes-usually have a medium skin tone
- Dark Brown Brunettes -try the medium or medium – deep shade
- Black hair -try the medium deep to deep shades
Determining Your Skin Tone
Once you have chosen your shade it is time to decide your skin tone. This is the underlying color of your skin. Most women have a cool skin tone because the melanin in your skin usually produces that undertone color to the skin.
A simple method of determination is to consider whether your skin burns or tans when exposed to sun:
- If you tan easily and do not burn, your skin’s natural melanin (the pigment that gives skin its color) level is higher, and you most likely have a COOL (yellow-to-olive) undertone.
- Those who burn and either tan minimally or not at all have significantly less melanin, which results in a WARM (pink, bluish-red, or ruddy) skin tone.
- If a sallow (or too yellow & gray) tone is predominant, you’ll notice that a foundation, consealer, or powders with too much yellow will make skin look worse, not better.
- Neutral skin tones are those with no obvious overtones of olive, sallow, or pink. In this case you may want to use a cool shade underneath and a warm color setting powder to bring out the color to your face.
Native North American or South American women, a tiny percentage of African-American women, and some Polynesian women do indeed have a red cast to their skin. Because their skin has a slightly reddish cast, they need to look for foundations that have a slightly reddish cast to them—but that’s only a hint of brownish red, and not copper, orange, or peach.
Choosing Flattering Makeup Colors
- Redheads -with fair to medium skin tones look great in corals, salmon, browns, ambers, bronze, and other earth tones.
- Blondes – with fair skin to medium skin tones look best in a range of pink shades.
- Light Brown Brunettes – with fair to medium skin tones look best in light rose and soft red shades.
- Dark brown hair -with fair to medium skin tones should wear more vivid shades of rose and cherry.
- Black hair – with deeper skin tones look great in soft natural tones such as nude pinks, soft browns, and pale corals.
