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How to Find the Perfect Color For Your Skin Tone

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Maryland chapter.

 

Have you ever found what you thought was the cutest top, but when you take it into the fitting room, it didn’t look quite as hot as it did on the mannequin? Maybe that was because that top did not flatter your skin tone. Keep reading to learn how to determine which colors compliment you best after following a few smart tricks and techniques!

Our diverse society finds people of many different races, ethnicities, and therefore varied skin tones.  This means today’s fashion must offer a variety of shades for people of every color.

One of the simplest methods to find which colors look best on you is to look at the color of your eyes and hair. According to Style Caster, cool colors look best on you if you have blonde, brown, or black hair with blue, silver, violet, or ash undertones and blue, gray, or green eyes.

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If you have strawberry blonde, brown, red, or black hair with gold, red, yellow, or orange undertones with hazel, brown, or amber eyes, then warmer colors compliment you the most. If looking at your hair and eye colors is doing a little too much for you, then here’s another trick you can try.

Image via Pinterest 

Ever noticed how on some days you can see the color of your veins and some days you can’t? Well now’s the time to take advantage of this opportunity to find the right color tones for you! The technique is to turn your hands over with your palms up and look at the veins under your wrists. If your veins are blue or purple, cooler tones look best; and if your veins look yellow or green, then you should lean towards warm tones.

But what if you don’t even know the difference between warm and cool colors? Then your next step should be to look at your handy dandy color wheel!

If you haven’t found out yet, the color wheel is important for more than just art projects. It comes in handy when painting rooms in your house and also for fashion purposes. Look at a color wheel and split it in half vertically. One side should be warm colors (lighter colors such as yellow and orange) and the other side should be cool colors (darker colors such as blue and violet).

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To make more use of the color wheel, the Fashion Spot says to select a color on the color wheel and draw a line to its direct opposite, which will be its complementary color.  For example, red and green are direct opposites on the wheel so they are complementary of one another. Another way to find what colors work with a specific color is by looking at the colors to the left and right of that specific shade to find its analogous colors.

The last trick to finding the best colors for your skin tone is to do the jewelry test. If silver or platinum jewelry complement your skin the most, then you’re cool-toned, while gold jewelry looks better on warm-toned women.

Image via Pinterest

After brushing up on all these tricks and techniques to determine which colors look best on you, then you can successfully incorporate some of this season’s trendiest colors, such as Radiant Orchid, the Pantone color of 2014, into your wardrobe. 

Jaclyn is so excited to be a campus correspondent with Her Campus! She is a sophomore at the University of Maryland, double majoring in Journalism and American Studies. Jaclyn hopes to work as an editor at a magazine in the future. She loves following fashion, attending concerts, traveling, and photographing the world around her.