What is colour analysis? It’s all about finding the right shade and intensity of colours that suit you best. There are shades of nearly all colours for everyone!
But WHY do certain shades and intensities suit us better than others? Some make us look healthy and vibrant, whilst others make us look like we’ve had a heavy night and no sleep! Well, let’s think for a moment of what your skin is made up of. The tone in your skin is a result of the combination of three pigments:
- Melanin (brown)
- Carotene (yellow)
- Haemoglobin (red)
Your unique skin tone is a result of your unique combination of these three pigments.
Of course, there are so many different skin tones we couldn’t list them all here! But we can break them down into four main groups:
Fair
Very pale skin tones are usually classified as ‘fair’. These are the people who are sensitive to the sun and burn easily. They will likely have light or red hair.
Light
Light skin tones burn easily, but they may gain a little colour in the summer. This is me – I get a brown neck, freckly, lightly golden arms, but my legs remain resolutely white!
Light toned people also may have warmer undertones to their skin compared to those with fair skin.
Medium
The easy tanners…. A variety of beige, olive and golden-toned skin tones.
Deep
You may automatically think of deep-toned people as those who tan the most easily. But the deepest shades in the spectrum don’t necessarily tan as if they are a cool tone – see below.
The Undertones
No, not an Irish band from the 80s… your undertone is the subtle colour that shows from beneath your skin’s surface. Your skin tone may change in the summer if you tan, but your undertone remains the same. They are divided into three main categories:
- Warm – golden or yellow
- Cool – blue or pink
- Neutral – a mixture of both
Warm means yellow tones, and cool is pink or red (strawberry ice-cream pink/red). With deep skin tones, golden honey tones indicate warmth. If a deep- toned skin is a terracotta red rather than the strawberry ice-cream pink, we’re looking at a cool undertone.
People can have a neutral skin tone when they have a mix of both.
So, it makes sense that colours in the same tones as our skin will suit us best. They can make us look and feel healthy, alert, fresh and glowing. Conversely, colours that clash with our skin tones can make us look and feel sluggish and tired.
So that’s what colour analysis is. Watch this space for more info on how colour analysis works in practice…
