Just liking matching your foundation or lipstick, certain colours make you look good and others simply don’t suit. For the first of our ‘dressing with less’ mini series let’s look at the wardrobe colours most likely to suit your skin tone.

What is your skin tone?

Skin tone is more the colour at the base layers of your skins rather than the actual colour of your skin. Your skin tone isn’t impacted by whether you are fair, light, medium or dark. Instead it sits beneath the surface colour and is categorised into cool, warm and neutral tones.

You can figure out our skin tone by checking the colour of your veins on the underside of your wrist.

• If your veins look blue you have a cool skin tone
• If your veins look green you have a warm skin tone
• And if your veins look blue and green you probably have a neutral skin tone

If you still aren’t sure, try holding a piece of white paper against your skin in natural light and see how your skin looks in comparison.

Wardrobe colours for skin tones

Warm skin tones : will generally suit warm and neutral colours. Think yellows, oranges, warm reds and browns.

Cool skin tones : yep you guessed it, cool tones suit cool colours. Think blues, greens, magenta and even pink.

Neutral skin tones : have the benefits of suiting both warm and cool colours but can seem washed out with too much neutral. Softer colours work best as brights can overwhelm. Think pastels, cream and washed denim.

Remember your skin tone doesn’t mean you can’t wear the opposite colour of the recommended shades, you just need to find a tone within the colour that matches your skin tone.

Wondering about skin tones and jewellery metals? Check out this useful article.