I remember reading my mom’s old books from the ’80s about figuring out whether you have a warm or cool skin tone and being like, “Ooo, this is very cool and interesting even though I’m not sure why exactly.” There’s just something fun about knowing where you “belong,” even if it’s in the most kind of pointless, kind of reductive form of classification. Still, the idea of finding out if you have a warm or cool skin tone can be useful in terms of figuring out which hair colors look best on you or which clothes look best on you, and really, anything that keeps us from needing to download an app where we try on ridic wigs and lipsticks virtually is probably a helpful, cool thing.
While you could buy a bunch of books to help you figure it out, or take a series of quizzes in the hopes you actually got the right answer and didn’t somehow mess it up by accident, here are some great ways to figure out if you’re a warm or cool skin tone, you know, just in case RuPaul ever asks you while you’re both at a Whole Foods for some reason.
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Do you look better in silver or gold jewelry?
This doesn’t necessarily mean “when you see a gold or silver bracelet, which one would you rather spend way too much money on?” as much as it means “which one makes you look like a sparkly princess full of radiant light?” I know it can be hard to tell the difference, but if you get more compliments when you wear silver or platinum jewelry, chances are you have cool undertones, and if you get more eyes on you when you wear gold, it’s likely because you have warmer undertones and are basically a human ball of sun
Do your veins look blue or green?
If your veins look more blue-ish, it’s likely you have cool undertones. And if they look kind of green, you might have yellow-toned skin, which combined with your blue-appearing blood is giving you the appearance of ~*green veins*~.
Which colors look best on you?
If yellow, warm red tones, ivory, off-white, or brown and tan colors make you look like a corpse, that’s probably because you have a cooler skin tone. If they make you shine like a beach queen, you probably have a warmer skin tone.
Alek Wek, Anne Hathaway, Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, Cara Delevingne all have cooler undertones, while Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Aniston, Beyoncé, and Kim Kardashian have warmer undertones. You know, if comparing yourself to celebrities you probably look very little like helps.
How do you tan?
If every time you’re out in the sun you turn a golden brown, you have warmer skin tones. If you turn pink first and then pretty much just burn, you have a cooler skin tone, which you probably already knew, due to all the burning.
So now you know! Feel free to do nothing or everything with this knowledge.
Original by Lane Moore