There’s a lot of confusion around figuring out what colours are ‘supposed’ to suit us, based on our skin tone, hair colour and eye colour. You can even break this down into 4 seasons; Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, which actually seems to makes things even more confusion.

I like to base my decisions on one simple thing; My Undertone. I know what you’re thinking, “do I have a warm undertone? Or Cool? Or maybe Neutral?” If you’re confused now, I promised you’ll have a much better idea by the end of this post. It’s not as difficult as you might think to figure out your undertone.

First things first, what is an undertone? This refers to the natural colours underneath the surface of your skin. You may already know yours if you’ve ever been colour matched for foundation in store, and been advised to choose a warm, cool or neutral shade. These can also be explained as yellow undertone (warm), pink undertone (cool) and green undertone (neutral). Choosing the right undertone in your makeup will balance out your complexion and even out your skin imperfections. The same principal can be applied when choosing clothing colours. The colours we wear, especially in those pieces close to our faces such as tops and dresses, will either compliment our own natural colouring or throw everything off balance.

So what is my undertone?

There are a few ways to figure out your undertone. Here is some of them:

1. Do you wear gold or silver/rose gold jewellery? If gold suit you best, chances are you have a warm undertone. And if you wear silver or rose gold, you may be cool tones. If you can wear either and not notice much difference, you’re probably neutral toned.
2. Look at your veins. Are they blue (cool toned) or green (warm) or a mix of blue and green (neutral).
3. What foundation shade do you wear? Have you been told whether it has a pink, yellow or neutral undertone? If not, try doing a google search for the shade you wear and see what information you can find, or go into a store and get colour matched. Remember to ask them what your undertone is and what the undertone of the foundation is.
4. Do you wear bright white (cool) or ivory/cream (warm)? If you have never tested these out, try it now in front of a mirror. You can see my examples of this below.

White (cool) V Ivory/Cream (warm)

5. What is your Eye colour: Do you have blue or grey eyes (cool) or dark brown (warm) or maybe green / hazel (neutral). Eye colour can play a big part in our overall colouring as it is something that doesn’t tend to change as often as our hair (bleaching & dying) or skin (tanning & makeup). I played around with some coloured contact lenses to test out the colours in my wardrobe to see how they would compliment or contrast with each other. I would recommend doing this with as many colours as you own and take some photos for reference, so that you can look back over them and compare them side by side.

The coloured lenses I tried are from Chiara Lens, who have sponsored this post. I chose a blue pair in ‘Magic Blue‘ and green in ‘Spring Green‘ from the Natural Beauty collection. These colours can really boost your own natural eye colour and come in a huge range of colours and shades.

The lenses were super easy to put in and very comfortable to wear. I forgot I was even wearing them most of the time until I looked in a mirror! They are so thin (as you can see in the next photo) so I didn’t even feel them once they were in.

If you’re interested in trying out Chiara Lens coloured contact lenses for yourself, you can get 10% off with code ‘DIS 10’ at checkout.

***When wearing lenses be sure to look after them by storing them in a saline solution to ensure they stay moist and clean. Eye health is super important so you definitely want to disinfect these in saline solution after every wear.

You can check out my video below to hear me chat more about the lenses and, of course, see me test out all the colours in my wardrobe with the different contact lenses and my own eye colour.

Below is some results of the colours I tried on. See if you can guess for yourself which colours suit me best depending on my eye colour, as a bit of practise for doing it on yourself.

Warm & Cool Tones

Some Celebrity Examples

Hopefully by now you have a much better idea of what your own undertone is and what colours will make you look your best. Remember, these are just a few guidelines, but ultimately you should be wearing whatever makes you feel incredible. Below is a chart of warm V cool colours that you can screenshot and keep with you next time your creating your Capsule Wardrobe colour palette or you’re out shopping or looking for some colour reference for your wardrobe.