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Your undertone is the steady hue under your skin's surface. Warm undertones lean golden, peachy, or yellow. Cool undertones lean pink, red, or blue. The two fastest tells: green wrist veins and flattering gold jewelry point warm, blue veins and flattering silver point cool.
How to find your undertone
- 1Vein test: check your inner wrist in daylight. Green veins lean warm, blue or purple lean cool, a mix means neutral.
- 2Metal test: hold gold then silver to your face. Gold flatters warm skin, silver flatters cool.
- 3White vs cream: drape pure white, then cream. If cream looks softer and better, you're warm. If white looks crisp, you're cool.
- 4Sun test: skin that tans easily leans warm. Skin that burns and goes pink leans cool.
- 5Color check: do earthy corals and olives suit you, or do berry and rose?
Undertone is not your skin color
Surface color changes all the time. You flush, you tan, you break out. Undertone is the part underneath that stays put, and it's what your season is built on. Warm undertones belong to Spring and Autumn, cool to Summer and Winter.
| Test | Warm | Cool |
|---|---|---|
| Wrist veins | Green | Blue or purple |
| Flattering metal | Gold | Silver |
| White vs cream | Cream | Pure white |
| In the sun | Tans | Burns and pinks |
| Best reds | Coral, brick | Berry, blue-red |
Plenty of people are neutral
If no test points strongly either way, you're probably neutral, and that's common. Neutral skin can wear a wider spread of both warm and cool shades, and your depth and chroma end up deciding the season instead.
Undertone is step one of three
Knowing you're warm only gets you to two of the four families. A warm person could be a delicate Light Spring or a deep, smoky Deep Autumn, and those two palettes look nothing alike. Depth and chroma do the rest. The full method is in our guide on finding your season.
Quick answers
Common questions.
How do I know if I'm warm or cool toned?+
Check your wrist veins and which metal flatters you: green veins and gold mean warm, blue veins and silver mean cool. Cream versus pure white and how your skin handles sun confirm it.
What is a neutral undertone?+
A neutral undertone leans neither way: veins look blue-green and both metals work. Neutral skins wear warm and cool shades and get typed mainly by depth and chroma.
Does undertone change over time?+
No. Surface color shifts with tanning and flushing, but the undertone underneath stays the same your whole life.
Eujin Choi
Professional draper, Seoul
Eujin runs her own personal-color clinic in Seoul, where seasonal analysis began. She has draped thousands of clients in person, and that hands-on read of how real fabric falls on real skin is what shapes everything she writes here.
Further reading