Your Guide On Finding Your Perfect Foundation Match
One of life’s most tricky situations is finding your foundation match. Sometimes when you buy a foundation and try it on, you realize the color looks too light, or there’s too much of a pink undertone (what’s an undertone?!) or worse–it even makes you look orange.
Here are a few tips on how to choose your perfect foundation shade. But first, here is how to decipher what your complexion is, exactly!
First thing’s first: determine what shade range you are in. This may seem like it should be the only step in the process, but it’s only the beginning. Once you decipher what range you are in, deciding what undertones you have becomes easier.
There are tons of shade ranges, but the easiest way to start is to see whether you fall under the Fair, Light, Medium, Tan, Dark and Deep range. After this is determined, onto the undertones!
Undertones are the underlying colors within your shade range–they never change. You may have a light shade, but you could tan–no matter what, your undertone stays the same.
For example, Fair to Light shades tend to either have cool, or pink undertones. Medium shades could have cool undertones, or warm/yellow undertones–or even pink. If you cannot determine your undertone, and let’s say you have Tan to Dark skin, you may just have neutral undertones or olive undertones.
For these reasons, choosing your foundation shade can be daunting. You may have decided your shade range, but you’re stuck on seeing your undertone. Here’s how you can do it.
The old trick in the book is to look at the color of your veins under natural light.
If your veins look blue, you have a cool undertone.
If your veins look blue-ish or green, you have a neutral undertone.
If your veins look green, you have a warm undertone.
Another way to decipher undertones is by the way you tan. If you burn easily, you have a cool undertone. If you burn a little bu then tan, you have neutral. And if you tan easily and don’t burn, you have warm/yellow/golden undertones.
If you’re ever unsure about your undertones, start with a neutral shade and go from there.
Now that you’ve got your shade and undertone on lock, here are foundations that I recommend that have a lot of shades to choose from! Inclusivity in makeup matters.
- Fenty Beauty Pro Filt’R Foundation
- Urban Decay Stay Naked Weightless Liquid Foundation
- bareMinerals BarePro Performance Wear Liquid Foundation
Below is a diagram from Urban Decay Cosmetics on how to shade match with their foundation! Although, this chart is useful for any foundation you want to shade match with.
from urbandecay.com