How to Find Your Undertone in Winter

To find your undertone in winter, test in daylight by a window, use your jaw, neck and inner arm instead of your cheeks, and run the gold versus silver and white versus cream tests. Your undertone does not change with the seasons. Only the surface does, through a faded tan, cold-weather redness, dryness and weaker light, so you need to look past those.

The short version: your undertone is stable, but winter makes it harder to see. This how-to sits under our skin tone analyzer guide and gives a step-by-step routine that works in the darkest months.

The quick answer

Winter is a bad season to guess your undertone by eye, and a fine season to find it if you follow a routine. Do these six things in order.

1. Find daylight. Stand beside a window in the middle of the day with no lamps on.
2. Test calm skin. Use the jaw, neck, chest or inner arm, not red, dry or irritated cheeks.
3. Compare gold and silver. Hold each against your bare neck and see which makes your skin look more even.
4. Compare white and cream. Put stark white and cream paper under your chin.
5. Try real fabric. Drape a warm color and a cool color of the same type near your face.
6. Add your history. Think about how your skin looked last summer and which foundation shades have matched you.

If most of these point the same way, you have your answer. The rest of this guide explains each step, what to do when winter skin is red, dry or pale, and how to move from undertone to color season.

What changes in winter and what does not

Your undertone is the subtle, steady tone beneath the surface of your skin, and it does not change with the seasons. What changes is the surface layer and the conditions around it. Understanding the difference stops you from deciding that you "turned cool" in January.

In winter the surface changes in four ways. A summer tan fades and takes its golden or reddish cast with it. Cold wind and indoor heating can leave you pink, red or blotchy. Dry air can make skin look dull, gray or flaky. And the light is weaker and often yellow indoors, which changes how every color looks. None of these alter your undertone, but together they can make a warm person look cool and a cool person look sallow.

This is the same distinction we describe in undertone versus overtone. Overtone is the surface color and it shifts. Undertone is the base and it stays. Our general guide on how to find your skin undertone at home gives the four core tests, and this post adapts them for the months when the conditions work against you.

Step 1: set up your light

Light is the biggest winter problem. Days are short, the sun is low, and most rooms are lit by warm bulbs. Warm bulbs add yellow to everything, which makes silver look dull and gold look rich whatever your skin is doing. To get a fair test:

• Test between about 10 am and 2 pm, when daylight is strongest.
• Stand within a meter of a window. A north-facing window gives the most neutral light. On an overcast day, a window is still better than any lamp.
• Turn off lamps and overhead lights, and remove any colored scarf or top near your face.
• Take off makeup, or at least test on a bare patch such as the neck and jaw.
• Use a mirror that is not tinted, and avoid bathroom mirrors with warm light strips.

If daylight is not possible, use a daylight-balanced bulb. Without a window or a bulb, wait for a brighter day. A rushed test in poor light is worse than no test, which is a point our piece on phone cameras and skin tone makes about photos as well.

Step 2: pick the right spots on your skin

Not all of your skin is equally useful in winter. Cheeks and the nose are the first places to flush with cold. Hands and lips dry out. The best places to test are the ones that stay calm and covered:

• Inner arm. It is usually protected from sun and wind, so it shows your base tone with less tan and less redness.
• Jaw and neck. They are less reactive than the cheeks, and they are where a color sits when you wear it.
• Upper chest. Covered most of the year, so it is a good reference for your natural tone.

Avoid any patch that is red, dry, freshly exfoliated or irritated. If you have redness or breakouts, our guides on finding your undertone with redness and finding your undertone with acne explain how to look around them.

Step 3: the gold versus silver test

Hold a gold item and a silver item against your bare neck or inner wrist, one at a time, in daylight. Look at your skin, not the metal. Ask which makes your skin look more even and healthy, and which makes it look gray, yellow or tired.

• If gold looks warm and rich and silver looks harsh, you lean warm.
• If silver looks clean and gold looks yellow or flat, you lean cool.
• If both look fine, you may be neutral or olive.

Winter pallor makes some people think silver suits them because everything looks bluish. Repeat the test twice, a few minutes apart, to make sure the result is consistent. Our deeper guide on gold or silver jewelry for your undertone covers what each outcome means.

Step 4: the white versus cream test

Fold two pieces of paper, one stark white and one cream, and hold them under your chin one at a time. Stark white tends to flatter cool undertones and make warm skin look yellow or tired. Cream or ivory tends to flatter warm undertones and make cool skin look dull. Our comparison of white versus cream shows what to look for.

In winter, be careful with this test if you are pale, because both papers can make you look drained. Look at the area around the jaw and the eyes, and notice which paper makes the shadows look cleaner. If neither paper helps, add the fabric test in the next step.

Step 5: try real fabric near your face

Fabric is a stronger test than paper because it is the thing you will actually wear. Pick two tops, scarves or towels of the same type of color, one warm and one cool. Good pairs are a warm red like tomato and a cool red like raspberry, an olive green and an emerald, or a camel and a gray. Hold each under your chin in daylight.

The better color makes your skin look even, makes your eyes look brighter and makes shadows softer. The worse color makes you look tired, makes redness stand out or makes your skin look yellow or gray. Do not judge by how much you like the color. Judge by what it does to your face. The full method is in our guide to how to do color draping at home.

Step 6: use your year-round history

Winter is when your own history helps most. Ask yourself:

• How did my skin look and tan last summer? Golden or peachy tans often point warm, and pink or red burns with little tan often point cool, though this is only a hint.
• Which foundation shade and tone has matched me over the years? Many people can name the undertone they were matched to, even if they have forgotten why.
• Which colors do people compliment? Repeated compliments on a certain color family are real information.
• Which jewelry metal do I naturally reach for, and which one do I feel looks off?

History is not proof, but it works well as a tie-breaker when a winter test is unclear. Our guides on finding your undertone with a tan and finding your foundation undertone expand on both clues.

How to read your results

Count how many tests point to each side. Three or more in agreement is a reliable answer. Mixed results usually mean neutral or olive.

• Warm: gold, cream and warm fabric win.
• Cool: silver, stark white and cool fabric win.
• Neutral: both sides work and neither looks wrong. Read about neutral undertone.
• Olive: your skin has a green-gold cast and both gold and silver can look off. See olive undertone.

If your results disagree after two attempts, the problem is almost certainly the light or the skin condition, not you. Wait for a clearer day, or retest the inner arm only.

Winter traps at a glance

If cold weather makes you red or blotchy

Cold-weather flushing is common on the cheeks and nose, and it pulls any skin toward pink. Do not test on those spots. Use the jaw, neck and inner arm, and wait until the skin has been indoors for at least twenty minutes so the flush settles. If your redness is persistent, test the areas that stay even, or use your history instead. Do not conclude you are cool just because winter has made you pink. Plenty of warm undertones flush pink in the cold.

If dry or flaky skin is hiding your tone

Dry skin scatters light and looks dull or gray, which can make warm skin look cool and cool skin look ashen. Moisturize and wait an hour before testing, and avoid exfoliating the same day, since freshly exfoliated skin can look pink. Test on a smooth, covered area such as the inner arm. A plain, non-tinted moisturizer will not change your undertone but will give you a more honest read.

If your summer tan has faded

A tan is overtone: it sits on top of your undertone. When it fades, you may look paler and cooler than you do in July, but your base has not changed. Use the pattern in your tan history and test the inner arm, which tans less. If you use self-tanner, the orange or brown it leaves is also surface color, so wait until it has worn off before testing, or test an untanned area. Our post on finding your undertone with a tan covers both cases.

Using foundation and makeup history as clues

If you wear foundation, the shade that matches you in summer and the shade that matches you in winter often share the same undertone even when the depth differs. That is a useful clue. Many people go one shade lighter in winter and stay in the same family. Our guide to foundation shade by undertone and the list of best foundation undertone matches help you read this. If you wear makeup daily, you can also read how to find your undertone with makeup on.

When to re-test in spring

If your winter result felt shaky, re-test on a bright day in spring, before a heavy tan sets in, and compare. The undertone should match. If it does not, look at which test changed and ask what surface factor was involved: light, flushing, dryness or tan. It is normal for one test to be off. It is not normal for your overall answer to swing, and if it does, your first answer was likely a light or surface problem.

From undertone to color season

Undertone is one input into your color season, along with depth and contrast. Warm undertones usually fall into spring or autumn, cool into summer or winter, and neutral or olive into the soft or deep seasons. The seasonal color analysis explainer shows the logic, and the 12 color seasons overview lists each season and its tendencies. Once you know your undertone, the find my color season guide and the personal color analysis guide are the next steps.

Winter is also a good time to plan your wardrobe. If you are going to refresh your closet in the new year, our guides to a new year wardrobe color reset and the best coat color for your skin tone show how to use your result.

Common mistakes

• Testing under a warm lamp. It makes gold look better than silver for everyone.
• Testing on red cheeks. Flushing points you pink, which is not the same as cool.
• Trusting one test. Run at least three and look for agreement.
• Assuming your undertone changed. It did not. The surface did.
• Judging by taste. Pick the color that makes your skin look best, not the one you like most. More traps are in common color analysis mistakes.

Checking with an app

If winter is making manual tests hard, a photo-based check can give an outside opinion. The Tone & Fit app reads skin, hair and eyes from a selfie and returns a season and palette. Take the photo near a window, with filters off, and compare it with your manual results. If you want to know how these tools work and where they fall short, read our color analysis app guide.

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