How to Find Your Lipstick Shade: Undertones, Lip Color and the Right Nude

Your best lipstick shades come from three things: your undertone (warm, cool or neutral), your natural lip color, and how much contrast you have between your skin, hair and eyes. Get those right and you can predict which pinks, nudes, berries and reds will work before you open the tube.

Swatching on your hand doesn't help much, because the back of your hand is often a different color from your lips and you can't see it next to your eyes and hair. Here's how to narrow it down properly.

Start with your undertone

Your skin's surface tone (fair, medium, deep) is easy to see. Undertone is the hue underneath, and it decides whether a lipstick looks fresh or slightly off. Look at your skin in daylight next to a white sheet of paper. If it reads golden, peachy or olive, you lean warm. If it reads pink, rosy or bluish, you lean cool. If you can't tell, you're probably neutral.

A second check: which looks better near your face, a pure white top or an off-white cream? Cool undertones usually win with pure white, warm with cream. The old vein test (blue veins mean cool, green mean warm) is less reliable than people think, especially on deeper skin, so trust the paper and fabric tests more.

Olive skin is the one that confuses most people. It has a green or grey cast that can read as both warm and cool. Olive skin usually looks best in muted, slightly brown-based colors: rosewood, brick, mauve and berry with a touch of brown.

• Warm undertones: coral, peach, brick red, orange red, warm brown nudes
• Cool undertones: berry, plum, mauve, blue-based reds, cool pinks
• Neutral undertones: most shades work, especially rose, dusty rose and rosewood

Use your natural lip color as a guide

Look at your bare lips. A lipstick that's one or two shades deeper than your natural lip color, in the same family, is almost always flattering. It's the easiest everyday shade to find and the one people end up wearing most.

Pigmented lips (common on deeper and olive skin) can shift sheer shades darker or make pale nudes look chalky. In that case, choose more opaque formulas or prep with a little concealer on the lips before a light shade.

Lips that are two-toned, with a darker outer edge and a lighter center, are common too. A lip liner close to the darker shade, filled over the whole mouth, evens out the base so every lipstick you put on top shows its real color.

How to find your perfect nude

Nude is where most wasted lipsticks come from, because 'nude' means a different color on every skin tone. The rule I use with clients: your nude should be slightly deeper than your skin, not lighter. A nude lighter than your skin washes out the mouth and can make the whole face look tired.

Fair skin usually suits soft pinky nudes like Nude Pink or Peach. Medium and olive skin look great in Rose, Dusty Rose or a warm Brown Nude. Deep skin tones often suit rich Brown Nude, Rosewood or Mauve better than anything labeled as a classic beige nude.

Factor in your contrast level

Contrast is the difference between your hair, skin and eyes. Someone with very dark hair and fair skin has high contrast and can wear deep, saturated lips like Wine Burgundy or Deep Plum without looking overpowered. Someone with light hair, light eyes and fair skin has low contrast, and the same plum can look like it's sitting on the face rather than part of it.

Low contrast doesn't mean no bold lips. It means picking brighter, lighter versions of a color: Coral instead of Brick Red, Berry instead of Deep Plum. If you've recently changed your hair color, check your contrast again, since going from dark brown to blonde can change which lip shades work. Our post on hair color for your skin tone explains how those two decisions affect each other.

A shade map: everyday, statement and evening

Most people need three lip colors, not twenty. One everyday shade close to their natural lip, one brighter color for when they want a lift, and one deeper shade for evenings. A practical way to build it:

• Everyday: your lip color plus one or two shades (Nude Pink, Rose, Brown Nude, Peach)
• Brighter: a shade from your undertone family (Coral and Orange Red if warm, Hot Pink and Berry if cool)
• Evening: a deeper version (Brick Red, Wine Burgundy, Plum or Deep Plum)

Test before you buy

Store testers and hand swatches only get you halfway. Before you spend money, look at the color on your actual face, next to your hair and eyes, in daylight. You can do this in a store with a disposable applicator, or with a virtual makeup try-on that puts a lip color on your own selfie so you can compare several in a minute.

Look at each shade for a few seconds, then look away and back again. Your first reaction is usually right: the shade that makes you look awake and healthy wins, even if another one is the color you thought you wanted. Also check the shade with the makeup you usually wear, since a lip that works on a bare face can feel too strong with full eye makeup, or too quiet with it.

Red is its own topic because the undertone of the red matters so much. If that's what you're shopping for, read how to choose red lipstick for your skin tone.

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