How to Find Your Undertone With Hyperpigmentation

To find your undertone with hyperpigmentation, ignore the dark patches and test the skin around them: compare clear areas such as the inner arm, jawline or behind the ear in daylight, run the jewelry and white-paper tests on your overall complexion, and treat any result that the patches skew as noise. Undertone is the steady base of your skin, and it does not change because some areas are darker.

The short version: patches from sun exposure, acne marks, melasma or uneven pigment change the surface color of the skin, not the undertone underneath. They can fool the usual tests, though, because a darker area can look warmer, greyer or redder than your base. This guide shows how to work around them. It is part of our wider walkthrough in the skin tone analyzer guide, and it assumes you have already read the basics in how to find your skin undertone at home. This is a color guide, not medical advice. If a patch is new, changing or worrying, a dermatologist is the right person to ask.

The quick answer

Follow these five steps, in this order, and you will usually reach a confident answer.

1. Use daylight. Stand near a window in indirect natural light, with no makeup on.
2. Test clear skin. Choose the areas least affected by patches, such as the inner forearm, the upper chest or the skin behind your ear.
3. Run at least three tests. The jewelry test, the white-paper test and the sun-reaction question each give a different angle.
4. Compare, do not decide from one spot. Hold your tests against the whole face, not only the darker areas.
5. Accept neutral if the answer is mixed. Mixed results are common and usually mean neutral or olive.

If you would rather skip the manual work, the Tone & Fit app reads the overall complexion from a selfie and returns a season and palette. We cover how it handles uneven skin further down.

Why hyperpigmentation confuses undertone tests

Hyperpigmentation is the general name for areas of skin that look darker than the skin around them. Common causes include sun exposure, marks left after acne or irritation, hormonal patches such as melasma, and age-related spots. The details differ from person to person, and the cause is a medical question, but the color effect is easy to describe.

Tests for undertone work by comparing your skin with a reference: a metal, a sheet of paper, a fabric. When part of the face is darker, redder or greyer than the rest, your eye gets pulled toward that area, and the comparison tilts. A brown patch can make skin seem warm. A reddish mark can make skin seem pink and cool. A greyish patch can make skin look dull or olive. None of these tell you about the base color of the skin, which is what undertone measures.

The fix is to do two things: look at the clearest skin you have, and look at the whole face rather than the patches. The rest of this guide is a set of ways to do exactly that.

Surface color versus undertone

It helps to separate three ideas, which our piece on undertone versus overtone explains in more detail.

• Surface color is what you see on any given day: the tan, the flush, the patches, the redness.
• Depth is how light or dark your skin is overall.
• Undertone is the cool, warm or neutral base beneath the surface, and it stays constant.

Hyperpigmentation is a surface effect. It can change how deep or even your skin looks, but it does not change your undertone. That is the same logic we apply when skin is tanned, covered in how to find your undertone with a tan, or freckled, as in how to find your undertone with freckles. If redness is the issue rather than darker patches, see how to find your undertone with redness.

Where to look: the clearest areas of skin

Pick the places where pigment is most even. Good candidates are:

• The inner forearm and the inside of the upper arm, which usually get less sun.
• The skin just behind the ear or along the side of the neck.
• The upper chest below the collarbone, if it has not been heavily sun exposed.
• The area where the jaw meets the neck, which often sits between face and body tones.

Avoid testing on any area that has patches, marks or recent irritation. If patches cover most of your face, use the arm or chest as the reference, and then confirm with the whole-face tests below.

One caution: body skin and face skin can differ in depth because of sun exposure, but their undertone is generally the same. That is why testing on the arm gives a useful answer even when the face is uneven.

Set up the test: light, mirror and bare skin

Conditions matter as much as the test itself.

• Light: soft daylight beside a window is best. Warm bulbs push skin yellow, and cool LED bulbs push it blue or grey. Our article on why your color season seems to change in different lighting shows how large the effect can be.
• Bare skin: wash off foundation, concealer and tinted moisturizer. Makeup that covers patches is built to change surface color, so it will also change the result.
• Time of day: late morning is reliable. Right after exercise, a hot shower or a glass of wine, skin is flushed and pink.
• Neutral surroundings: wear a plain white or grey top, and keep brightly colored walls out of the mirror, since reflected color changes how skin looks.

Take a few minutes before you begin so your eyes adjust. Looking at a single patch for too long makes the surrounding skin look like the opposite color, so look at the whole face and then glance away.

The jewelry test, adjusted

The jewelry test is one of the most useful because it compares your complexion with metal, not with your own patches. Hold a piece of yellow gold and a piece of silver against the clearest skin you have, then against the overall face. If gold makes the skin look richer and more alive, you lean warm. If silver makes it look clearer and fresher, you lean cool. If both look fine, or neither stands out, you may be neutral.

Two adjustments help when you have patches. First, hold the metal against the skin around the jawline and neck, not against a patch. Second, look at the overall impression, not at one spot. A gold chain can seem to flatter a brown patch while still making the rest of the face look yellow. The full method, including how to judge the result, is in our guide to gold or silver jewelry for your undertone.

The white paper and fabric test

This test uses large areas of color, which makes it less likely to be thrown off by small patches. Hold a sheet of pure white paper beside your bare face, then a sheet of cream or ivory paper, and look at which one makes the overall complexion look healthier. If stark white looks clean and cream makes you look sallow, you lean cool. If cream looks warm and flattering while white looks harsh, you lean warm.

You can repeat this with fabric. Drape a bright white scarf and a warm cream scarf under your chin, and look at the whole lower face. Then try one cool color and one warm color, such as a rose pink and a peachy coral. The one that smooths the skin and brightens the eyes is closer to your undertone. For a more structured version, see our guide to color draping at home.

When you drape, patches often become more or less visible depending on the color. That is useful information in itself. A color that makes patches stand out sharply is often a poor match for your overall complexion. A color that evens the face out is usually closer to a good match. The idea is explained further in colors that wash you out.

Veins, with caution

The vein check is the weakest test, and it is more likely to go wrong when pigment is uneven. If your inner wrist is clear, look at the veins in natural light. Blue or purple veins tend to go with cool undertones, green veins with warm, and a mix with neutral. Because the color of the skin above the vein affects how it looks, treat the result as a tie-breaker only. Our guide to what blue or green veins mean explains the limits of this test. If your wrist has patches or is deeply tanned, skip it.

The sun reaction test

This test uses history, not appearance, so patches do not affect it. Think about how your skin behaves in the sun without protection:

• Skin that burns or turns pink first, and tans slowly, often leans cool.
• Skin that goes golden or bronze easily, with little burning, often leans warm.
• Skin that does a bit of both is often neutral or olive.

Keep in mind that this is a hint, not a diagnosis, and sun safety matters more than any color test. It is useful here precisely because it ignores the current state of your skin. Pair it with the jewelry and paper tests, and look for agreement.

Compare patches with clear skin

Once you have a first guess, you can use the patches themselves as a check. Look at how the darker areas differ from your clear skin:

• If patches look warmer, more golden brown or tan, that is a surface effect and does not mean you are warm.
• If patches look reddish or pink, that is often irritation or a vascular effect and does not mean you are cool.
• If patches look grey or ashy, this can make skin look olive or dull, so take extra care before deciding.

If your result changes depending on whether you include or exclude the patches, trust the version without them. The undertone is the part of the skin you would see if the patches were not there.

Photos, filters and apps

Photos can help or hurt. A phone camera adjusts white balance automatically and often smooths out skin, so patches can disappear and undertone can shift in the process. Our article on why your phone camera lies about skin tone explains what goes wrong. For best results with any photo, use soft daylight, turn off beauty filters and portrait smoothing, and avoid color casts from nearby walls.

Selfie-based tools can read your overall complexion rather than a single spot, which is helpful when pigment is uneven. The Tone & Fit app analyzes skin, hair and eyes together and returns a season and palette. As with any photo-based method, lighting still matters, and you should compare the result with the manual tests. Our color analysis app guide explains how this kind of analysis works and where it has limits, and the at-home phone camera tutorial shows how to take a good photo.

How to read mixed results

Mixed results are common, and they are usually informative.

• Mostly cool answers: you probably lean cool. Look at the cool skin tones explainer.
• Mostly warm answers: you probably lean warm. See the warm skin tones explainer.
• Even split: you are likely neutral, covered in neutral undertone skin.
• Greenish gold cast with no clear pattern: you may be olive. Read the olive undertone explainer and the guide on telling whether olive skin is warm or cool.
• Deeper skin with uneven tone: see deep skin undertone, which discusses how depth changes the signals.

If you still feel stuck, do not force a decision. Wear colors from the neutral range and observe how people respond and how the mirror looks over a few weeks. The broader process is described in our personal color analysis guide, and the find my color season guide lays out how undertone connects to a full palette.

After you know: colors and makeup

Once you have an undertone, it connects to a season and a palette. If the system is new to you, start with the seasonal color analysis explainer and the overview of the 12 color seasons.

Clothing

Colors near the face matter most. Choose shades whose temperature matches your undertone and whose depth suits your coloring. A well-matched color tends to even out the appearance of the skin, which is a practical bonus when pigment is uneven. The guide to what colors look good on you gives a full method.

Foundation and concealer

The same undertone logic applies to base makeup. Match foundation to your overall skin, not to the patches, and use color correction or concealer for the areas you want to even out. Our guides on foundation shade by undertone, how to find your foundation undertone and the best foundation undertone match cover this in detail.

Blush, lips and metals

Blush and lipstick follow temperature too. Cool undertones suit blue-based pinks and berries, warm undertones suit peach, terracotta and brick, and neutral undertones suit rosewood and soft coral. See blush by undertone for shade ideas. For metals, silver suits cool, gold suits warm, and either works for neutral.

Common mistakes

• Testing on a patch. A darker area shows surface color, not undertone. Always test on clear skin as well as the whole face.
• Testing in warm indoor light. Bulbs change the color of everything. Use daylight.
• Testing with makeup on. Coverage changes the skin you are trying to read.
• Relying on one test. Each test has a weakness. Look for agreement across at least three.
• Treating the result as permanent about depth. Your undertone is steady, but depth shifts with sun, season and skin changes, so your best shades may look slightly different through the year.
• Assuming a warm look means a warm undertone. Brown patches look golden, but golden does not equal warm. Compare with the whole face.

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