You already know which colors make you feel like yourself. You’ve just never had a map for it. This guide is that map. Work through it at your own pace. Most people find their best shades in an afternoon, without spending a thing.
1. Find where your skin falls
Every skin tone sits somewhere on two questions: how much yellow is in it, and how much red or pink. Yellow without much pink is olive. Yellow and pink together is warm. Pink without much yellow is cool. Neither taking over is soft neutral.
Top to bottom: olive, warm, soft neutral and cool skin, each from light on the left to deep on the right. Undertone and depth are two different things, so every skin tone runs the full range.
Not sure which row is yours? Undertone walks you through a few daylight tests and what your foundation shade can tell you.
2. Open your guide
Each guide builds your palette one piece at a time: your best blue jeans first, then a capsule rainbow that harmonizes with them, your best pinks for a t-shirt, and the neutrals that hold it together.
Colors for Warm Skin Tones
Colors for Cool Skin Tones
Colors for Olive Skin Tones
Colors for Soft Neutral Skin Tones3. Learn the language of color
Three dials describe any color. Once you can name them, you can find your shades anywhere.
- Temperature: warm or cool. Undertone
- Value: light to deep. Color Value
- Chroma: soft to clear. Color Chroma
- All three together: Color Genres
- Putting colors together: Color Harmony, Color Families and Color by Season
- How color feels: Color Psychology and Color as Somatic Language
4. Explore by color
Each color post covers its meaning and history, which shade suits your skin’s depth, and every shade in my dye library.
Earthy warm colors · the home colors of Springs and Autumns
Cosmic cool colors · the home colors of Summers and Winters
5. Try it on your own clothes
Pick one piece you almost love, like a pair of jeans in not-quite-your blue, and shift it toward your shade. Upcycling Something From Your Closet shows how, Choosing Fabrics tells you what will take dye, and How to Dash Dye walks you through it.
Each skin tone kit has the eight dyes from that guide’s capsule rainbow, one from every color family.
Or shop every dye for your skin tone.
Save the whole map
Every skin tone’s best blue jeans, capsule rainbow and best pinks on one card. Screenshot it for later.
Keep wandering
- Wear it: Ways to Tie and Scarf Resources
- Feel it: sensory-friendly clothing made with no tags, minimal seams and flowing fabric
- Meet me: Embracing Neurodiversity, the story behind the colors, the softness and the rainbow in my logo, and The Artist
Your next step
Book A Color Revival
Three hours to revive your whole closet in the colors that are truly yours: an in-depth color analysis, a closet edit, six pieces dash-dyed as a capsule that mixes and matches, and ten styled photos of you in it.
More joy is possible.