Colors for Cool Skin Tones

Find Your Colors · Skin tone guides: Warm · Cool · Olive · Soft Neutral

If silver looks clean on you and bright white makes your skin look fresh, you probably have cool skin. Cool skin carries pink, rose or a blue-red flush, on light, medium and deep skin alike.

Where your skin sits

Top to bottom: olive, warm, soft neutral and cool. Your row is in full color, from light skin on the left to deep on the right. Cool is about undertone, not depth, so it runs the whole range.

• Skin: Pink, rosy or blue-red
• Wrist veins: Blue or purple
• In the sun: Burns or turns pink first
• Best metal: Silver, platinum, white gold

Not sure? Find Your Colors puts all four side by side, or compare warm skin tones, olive skin tones and soft neutral skin tones.

Your palette by depth

Find your skin on the left, then read across. Light skin glows in the lighter shades, deep skin in the deeper ones. The columns run red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, purple, magenta and neutral.

Your hair and eyes

Skin sets your undertone. Hair and eyes set your contrast: how different your darkest and lightest features are.

• Low contrast (left): hair, skin and eyes sit close together. Softer, lighter colors look the most like you.
• Medium contrast (middle): one step apart. Medium, moderate colors are your sweet spot.
• High contrast (right): dark hair, lighter skin, bright eyes. Clear, deep colors and crisp pairings hold their own on you.

Cool skin often comes with ash or platinum blonde, ash brown, cool dark brown, blue-black or silver hair, and blue, gray, cool brown or near-black eyes. Most of my dyes for cool skin fall into jewel tones, dusky shades and vivids; match the genre to your contrast in Color Genres.

Your capsule rainbow

One dye from every color family, red to magenta, all in harmony with your skin. These are the real swatches: tap one for its hex code, or add it to your cart.

All eight come together in the Cool Skin Tone Dye Kit.

Dash it onto denim

Denim is the easiest place to start, because blue jeans already go with everything. Three steps:

• Shift the blue. To cool down a pair of jeans, dash a little violet over the blue. Blue plus violet leans periwinkle and indigo. Start light; you can always add more.
• Add your rainbow. Sprinkle two or three capsule colors on wet denim, near the pockets and hems first. Mist and let them bloom.
• Rinse and wear. Every color now ties your jeans to the rest of your closet. Full how-to in How to Dash Dye and Upcycling Something From Your Closet.

Dyes for shifting your denim toward your blue:

Your neutrals, blues and pinks

The three groups you’ll reach for most. Soft white, cool gray, charcoal and true black hold a cool palette together better than camel or brown.

Neutrals

Blues

Cool skin loves blues that lean violet: true indigo, cobalt, crisp navy and periwinkle. Yellowed vintage washes and green-leaning teal denim tend to fight you.

Pinks

Your pinks carry blue: bubble gum, hot pink and fuchsia. A berry or bubble gum t-shirt with indigo jeans is crisp and bright. Pink is where joy shows up first, so these are worth having close.

Keep going

The other skin tone guides:

• Back to the overview: Find Your Colors
• Learn the nine genres: Color Genres

Explore by color

Earthy warm colors · the home colors of Springs and Autumns

Cosmic cool colors · the home colors of Summers and Winters