How to find your undertone: warm, cool or neutral?
5 min read Make-up Updated 1 November 2026 By Anna Sophie Schulenburg
To find your undertone, look at the inside of your wrist in daylight: if the veins look greenish, it is warm; if they look bluish, it is cool; and if you see both, it is neutral. Confirm the result today with a second test, a sheet of white paper held next to your face. When you have your undertone right, a matching highlighter on your cheekbone blends into your skin instead of sitting on top of it as a pale stripe.
Your undertone is the colour that shows through from beneath the surface of your skin: more golden and yellowish, more rosy and bluish, or a mix of the two. It decides which highlighter, which blush and which lip colour suit you, however light or dark your skin is.
Undertone and skin tone: two different things
Your skin tone describes how light or dark your skin is, from very light through light and medium to deep. It changes with a tan: in August it is often a shade darker than in February. Your undertone, on the other hand, stays largely the same whether you are tanned or not.
You need both to choose a colour. Your skin tone sets how light a concealer or foundation should be, your undertone which way it leans. Very light skin can be warm and dark skin can be cool. If you only go by lightness, it is easy to end up with a shade that is exactly light enough and still looks grey or orange.
How to find your undertone in four steps
Step 1 — The right light. During the day, stand by a window, out of direct sun and with no lamp on. Bathroom lighting is often yellowish or bluish and skews any result. It helps to take your make-up off first, because a tinted cream distorts what you see.
Step 2 — The wrist. Turn your hand over and look at the veins on the inside of your wrist. Greenish veins point to a warm undertone, bluish or purple ones to a cool one. If you can't decide, that is a result in itself: neutral.
Step 3 — The white sheet. Hold a sheet of white paper next to your face and look in the mirror. If your skin looks yellowish or golden beside it, it leans warm. If it looks rosy or bluish, it leans cool. If it simply looks light or dark next to the paper, it leans neutral.
Step 4 — The cross-check on your jaw. Draw one stroke of a golden and one of a rosy highlighter or lipstick side by side along your jawline. The shade that melts into your skin matches your undertone. The other one sits visibly on top of your skin as colour.
More clues if the result is still unclear
| Test | Leaning warm | Leaning cool | Leaning neutral |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jewellery | gold makes your skin look fresher | silver makes your skin look fresher | both suit you equally |
| White or cream at your neck | cream sits better with your skin | pure white sits better with your skin | either works |
| Your natural eyes and hair | often golden or reddish tones in the hair | often ashy tones in the hair | mixed |
| Skin in the sun | tends to turn golden | tends to redden before it tans | varies |
These clues are less clear-cut than the two tests above. How your skin reacts to the sun, for example, depends heavily on how light your skin is and much less on your undertone. Treat them as confirmation when the wrist and the paper point the same way.
An olive undertone is a special case: next to the white paper, your skin looks slightly greenish-gold. When you choose colours, it usually behaves like a warm undertone, just more muted.
Which colours suit your undertone
| Undertone | Highlighter | Blush | Lips | Eyeshadow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| warm | golden, champagne | peach, coral, terracotta | peach, brick red, warm nude | bronze, copper, olive green |
| cool | rosy, rose gold, pearlescent | berry, soft rose, cool pink | berry, pink, blue-red, rosy nude | grey, taupe, plum |
| neutral | both, ideally subtle shades | rose with a hint of peach | mid-tone nudes, dusky pink | taupe, brown, mauve |
| olive | golden, bronze | peachy brown, terracotta | caramel, rust red | khaki, bronze, gold |
The table is a starting point. A cool pink on warm skin is not a mistake if you like it; it simply stands out more. How to place a highlighter in your shade is covered in the guide to applying highlighter properly, and liner and lip colour in the guide to doing your lips.
Common mistakes when finding your undertone
| Mistake | Better |
|---|---|
| Judging your undertone under the bathroom light | at a window in daylight |
| Testing colours on the back of your hand | on your jawline, because the skin there matches your face |
| Reading red cheeks as a cool undertone | test on your wrist, where the skin is not flushed |
| Choosing a shade in winter and keeping it through summer | adjust the lightness as you tan; the direction stays the same |
| Deciding by the colour in the shop photo | test the shade on your jaw against a second one |
Flushed cheeks can easily lead you to the wrong result. Redness is a reaction of the skin and says nothing about its undertone. Where it can come from is explained in the guide to the causes of facial redness.
If you wear MONAT make-up
MONAT offers the Liquid Highlighter™ in two shades: Champagne is more golden and suits a warm undertone, Rose Gold is rosier and suits a cool one. With a neutral undertone, both usually suit you, and you choose by the look you are after. Pick the Lip Liner™ as close to your natural lip colour or your gloss as you can. With the Lip-Plumping Gloss™, a pale shade forgives sloppy application more readily than a bold one. The product page in your country's MONAT shop shows which shades it carries at the moment, and the whole range is in the MONAT make-up overview.
Quick questions
Can my undertone change?
Hardly at all. A tan, redness and make-up change how light and how rosy your skin looks; the undertone underneath stays the same.
Is pink off the table with a warm undertone?
No. A pink with a hint of peach suits a warm undertone, while a pink with a blue cast stands out more on warm skin. Either is a matter of taste.
How light should my concealer be?
Test it on your jawline in daylight. For shadows under the eyes, half a shade lighter than your skin; for individual red patches, exactly your skin tone.
Is neutral an undertone in its own right?
Yes. Neutral means the warm and cool elements balance each other out. Shades from both sides then usually suit you, the in-between ones best of all.
The free skin analysis includes an optional question about your undertone and favourite colours, so that your consultant can suggest shades to match.