Stop Thinking Only About Undertone
Every day, thousands of people search the internet trying to figure out their undertone. They study the color of their veins, hold white paper next to their face, and try to decide whether they’re pink, peach, beige, neutral, golden or olive.
More often than not, they end up more confused than when they started.
I understand why.
We’ve become so focused on undertone that we’ve forgotten to talk about color itself.
After more than twenty years as a makeup artist, I’ve come to think about foundation matching a little differently. Undertone absolutely matters—but it’s only one part of the picture.
Every color can be described by three characteristics.
Depth — how light or dark a color is.
Temperature — where a color falls on the spectrum from warm to cool. In skin, warm generally means more yellow and cool generally means more red.
Chroma — how muted or how saturated a color appears.
Depth is easy to understand. Think cream versus espresso.
Temperature describes where a complexion falls on the spectrum between yellow and red. Many people have some of both, while others sit remarkably close to one end of the spectrum. The question isn’t which category you belong to—it’s where your skin naturally falls.
Chroma is the quality we talk about the least, yet it may be the most important. Imagine the difference between weathered driftwood, sea glass and shells softened by years in the ocean versus a tropical flower in full sun. One is muted. The other is vivid.
These three characteristics describe every color we see—including skin.
That doesn’t mean everyone has the same complexion. Far from it. But after matching thousands of faces, one observation has stayed with me: most natural skin exists within a remarkably similar range of chroma. Human skin is generally much softer and more muted than we realize. It rarely resembles the highly saturated colors we see in nature.
This is one reason foundation can look “off.”
When someone says a foundation is too orange, too yellow or too gray, they’re usually reacting to one of three things. The depth may be wrong. The temperature may be wrong. Or the chroma may simply be too high, making the foundation appear unnaturally vivid against real skin.
So where does undertone fit into all of this?
The word undertone has become beauty shorthand for a skin’s underlying color temperature. It’s a useful term, but I think we’ve given it more importance than it deserves.
To me, undertone isn’t a mysterious invisible color hiding beneath the skin. It’s simply the natural balance of yellow and red that gives your skin its overall temperature.
Sun exposure can temporarily change what we see. For many people, the sun adds visible redness. Someone whose natural skin leans yellow may appear bronze or terracotta after spending time in the sun. Someone whose complexion naturally leans cooler may simply become a deeper red. Others tan with very little redness at all, becoming richer shades of ochre or golden brown.
The tan changes the appearance of the skin, but it doesn’t necessarily change its natural temperature.
Take olive, for example.
In cosmetics, olive has become a familiar way of describing a family of foundation shades. Collectively, we understand it to mean skin with very little visible red that instead leans toward yellow. In other words, olive is largely defined by the absence of red.
Personally, I don’t think of olive as a completely separate color category. I think of it as a particular balance of depth, temperature and chroma. Very muted yellow skin, particularly in lighter to medium complexions, can appear almost green to our eyes—not because green pigment is present, but because that’s how our visual system often interprets low-chroma yellow.
Whether you call it olive, golden or neutral matters less to me than understanding the actual color you’re trying to match.
When I’m matching foundation, I’m really asking only two questions.
How light or deep is the skin?
How much does it lean toward yellow or toward red?
That’s it.
You might be wondering why I’m not talking more about chroma if I believe it’s one of the three essential characteristics of color.
The answer is simple: I already account for it before I ever open my kit.
Over the years I’ve intentionally built my foundation kit so nearly every foundation falls within the same muted range of chroma that I see in natural skin. I don’t carry highly saturated foundations because people simply aren’t primary colors. Once chroma is controlled, the only variables I need to adjust are depth and temperature.
There is one exception.
I keep a single higher-chroma foundation in my kit, and I use it almost exclusively for clients with fresh spray tans. A spray tan doesn’t just deepen the complexion—it often makes the skin appear noticeably more saturated as well. It’s one of the few situations where I regularly adjust chroma in addition to depth and temperature.
That one product reminds me that chroma is real. It just isn’t something I need to adjust very often.
I also always match foundation to the upper chest, or décolleté, rather than the face.
The body is simply a much larger canvas than the face. Matching your foundation to your body means you only need to perfect the complexion on your face. If you match your face instead, you may end up trying to make your neck, chest and even your arms match the foundation you’ve chosen.
From a practical standpoint, it’s far easier—and far more natural—to bring the face into harmony with the body than the other way around.
My second rule is to use as little foundation as possible.
Foundation’s job is to unify the complexion, not erase it.
Apply a sheer layer to even the skin, then use concealer—or a targeted corrector like the SPATCH Powder Corrector—only where more coverage is actually needed. Skin stays transparent. Freckles still look like freckles. The result looks like skin instead of makeup.
And finally, there’s one test that matters more than any undertone quiz you’ll find online.
Stand near a window.
Look at your foundation in honest daylight.
If it disappears into your skin—if it isn’t too light, too dark, too warm or too cool—you’ve found your match.
The beauty industry has taught us to memorize categories.
I’d rather teach you how to see color.
Once you understand depth, temperature and chroma, foundation matching becomes much simpler.
And if your foundation disappears in daylight, you’ve found your match.