How to pick the right colours to wear

How important is dressing up for you? Are you the type to randomly pull out an outfit and go on with your day or are you somebody who takes time in planning your outfits for the day? Irrespective of your lifestyle and choices, here is a cheat code for you, read on to know how you can dress best by just understanding your skin undertones.

 

WHAT IS AN UNDERTONE

A lot of people confuse skin tone from skin undertone, skin tone is the colour of your skin which is on the outside while skin undertone is on the inside of your skin it is the layer underneath it. Is this overwhelming you already? Do not worry, you can take a simple test to determine your skin undertone and how to do so is mentioned in the following sections.

 

SKIN UNDERTONES

There are three basic types of skin undertones, warm, cool and neutral. Here are two basic and simple ways you can find out which category you fall into.

 

THE WRIST TEST

Look at your wrist, see what colour your veins are, if you have got green veins, you are warm. If your veins are blue, you have a cool undertone and if you have green and purplish undertone you are neutral. Yup! This is how simple it is.

 

THE SUN TEST

As an additional step to be assured, think of how your skin reacts like when you are under the sun for atleast 15 mins. Do you turn pink and get sun burnt easily or do you tan super quick? If you said yes to the first question that is if you said you turn pink under the sun then you are cool toned person and if you said you tan in seconds when exposed to the sun you are warm and having a mixed reaction means you have neautral undertones.

 

COLOURS YOU LIKE VS COLOURS THAT SUIT YOU

When a stylist or an image consultant tell you that a particular colour is not for you, they don't refer to your skin tone, instead they refer to your skin undertone. By now you know the difference between tone and undertone so let’s get straight to the point. You and your friend might have the exact skin colour, your could be a huge fan of green and your friend might hate that colour, lets say you are a cool toned person while your friend could be a warm toned. There is no way you can compare yourself to anyone based on the colour of your skin, though you love green it might not suit you while it might suit your friend who hates green, this should not stress you out because guess what, you still can rock green, just pick the right shade for you, you will learn more of this while you read the next section of this blog.

To simplify things for you, go for patterns, you can incorporate cool colours though you are a warm toned person, the best and safest way to do so is let these colours into the patterns and pair them with one accent colour. To give you an example, if you love a warm brown but you have cool undertone, try to wear a shirt with brown patterns and prints and pair it with a brown pant and brown shoes and belt. With that white it helps balance out the colours for you.

 

GUIDE TO PICK YOUR COLOUR

Now that you know if you are warm, cool or neutral let’s get you to the next step that is understanding what colours are best for you. To give you a basic idea, if you are cool skin toned, blues suit you for sure, if you have a warm toned, yellows are your cheat colours and if you are neutral then you’ve got the most advantage as most of the shades and colours suit you.

 

Here is a simple colour palette to help you understand this concept better.

 

WARM: You can opt for colours like dark blue, yellow, deep reds and greens. You have to look for red and yellow undertones in any shade you pick. Blacks, whites and nude shades can make you look like a million bucks.

 

COOL: You can look out for colours like pinks and light to medium shades of blue and parrot greens. You could also play around with neons and pastel shades as much as you like provided you make sure they are all cool toned.

 

NEUTRAL: And you are the most gifted as any and all shades suit you. However, as a quick tip, try and understand which shades pop the best onto your skin and experiment with different styles and shades.

 

As a last tip for you all, no matter what your skin tone or type or undertone is all that matters is what is on the inside, so dress up, chin up and walk your way to success like the star that you are! If you happen to try these out share them with us, we would love to see your inner stylists do the magic. Tag us @ottostore_com so we won’t miss out on your looks.