Skin Tone

[vintagerebeck]

Looking for advice for how to know what my skin tone is. I’ve always been told I’m olive/yellow/golden. But I change dramatically through the year. I can be very pale in the winter & much darker come summer. My mom is brown-skinned, so I’m mixed on one side & French on the other. I was looking at the Tarte Tape chart which ended up being what led me here. I’ve never found concealer or foundation that actually is perfect. I use a peach tone concealer (Pixie) as I am purple under the eye & it neutralizes. Then Neutral Beige 3 Lancôme concealer. When I’ve tried foundations they’re either so neutral I no longer have any colour & then need to add colour or they’re too yellow… leading me to mix. I finally met a worker at Sephora who I knew shared a similar background as me, & he said he even struggled & it was validating. I did use to use Clinique BB cream that was tinted & it was amazing but the one I used got discontinued about 10 years ago. I would even love something like that again as it’s just a nice lightweight coverage that hydrates too. Just looking for any advice/suggestions! Cheers! 

[SportyGirly125]

@vintagerebeck @If you have a store near you I would go in for a skin scan so a beauty advisor can help you. 

[vintagerebeck]

What do they do for that? Have you ever had it done? Just curious! I it seems I’ve always been slightly mislead only to figure out once I’m home that something is too neutral or too yellow. I must be hot mess going around sometimes lol! I was really hopefully I’d find something in the Fenty or Rare Beauty lines but I was told there’s nothing really there for olive. I always heard great things about Tarte tape concealer so that’s something I always wanted to try but I think years ago you couldn’t buy it here. Thank you for responding though. Never posted before but thought it was worth a try! 

[SportyGirly125]

@danielledanielle Thank you for the tag

@vintagerebeck sephora employee here

Beauty advisors will use a skin scan device to determine your shade range and undertone. It isn’t 100% accurate but I do use it as a guide.  I scan the forehead, cheek, and neck to get an overall shade range that can be done in seconds.  

This is just me but I never go off the scan results if it says they are warm or cool tone. I like to go neutral before going either direction unless it’s obvious they are cool or warm tone. I have done a bunch of skin scans from light to dark skin tones and have been working at Sephora since October as a beauty advisor.  I have been on the forum for over a decade giving product advice. If you are olive tone then we can look at foundation shades that end in O. 

Try going in store and getting an advisor that is willing to listen to your concerns and help find a foundation and concealer you like. 

[danielledanielle]

@vintagerebeck, @SportyGirly125 can elaborate, but it's a narrowing of color selection for a complexion product or a narrowing for skincare. They will ask some questions and help find what you're looking for by swatching  or testing something on your skin when a device.  With color ID, it's narrowing down to shade, skin type and undertone.  It's based in color science, so it's good to try, but there are limits, IMO.

1. Store lighting.  It's wildly different than outdoors, overcast, indoor, etc etc.  This is usually the reason for looking orange/yellow.  That lightning usually goes against that, and then bam. Oompa loompa.
2. This is my personal one, but limited experiences with people of color.  It doesn't happen to me as often anymore, but there used to be an bias that a brown/black person equals warm, that even when I would state a match I would get..."How can that be your match, that's my shade?" 😶 Even if the associate was a person of color, that's just straight telling you're limited in inclusivity.  (The match would btw, be something I tried with a different, likely more inclusive associate btw.)
3. Color Theory!  You wanna neutralize something or even something out with complexion 9/10... That's usually using color theory.  If someone uses this correctly, you'd get shade matched perfectly.. my last in store experience, she low-key sarcastically said she was doing this 😂 and guess what.  The shade match was on point.
4. Hyperpigmentation.  It's not uncommon to have hyperpigmentation (even with less melanin of a certain type), it's just less discernable with an off shade match in lighter shade and usually more drastic in a deeper shade.  I'm also not referring to redness, but again you'd use color correctors and color theory to address it.  It's also a preference thing, some prefer to go a shade lighter in base (🙋🏽‍♀️)
5. The color base of the product.  This is trial and error thing  you'll notice.  Some product "lean" a certain way, even if labeled neutral.  This is like the fourth time I've said it, but Haus Labs leans really pink/warm in spite of saying they have olive shades.  I can't use their neutral, I have to use a cool.  Some pigments like blue and violet are just more expensive, so the options for green and pale folx get really tight/limited or just kinda odd.

What you can do:

• Use the shade finder here, or use findination. com if you know a good match, findination actually has several discontinued products, so that to me is a better start and they still add new ones.
• Look at your veins in all areas.  I have green and green blue, so  I will say that olive is technically an overtone, my undertone is neutral/cool depending on where.
• If you can't go in store, look for sample deals.  Sephora has a good one where they send you a bunch of samples for what's essentially a down payment on a complexion product.  Yes, you get samples for free, but the voucher can be used on even something like a complexion booster, unless they changed that.  You can keep all the samples, IMO, they are really good for travel or care packages. I also used Haus Labs as example, because they did something similar where you pick three shades and you get that payment off towards your pick, but if you didn't match, you are just covering the costs of the samples.
• If you do go in store, get swatched on two areas, like cheek and neck or forehead and neck.  Ask for samples, of the store gives, and take pictures of the swatches in store light and daylight.
• Purchase an affordable color corrector.  Something orange, use blue.  Something too red, use green.  Something yellow, try purple.  Something purple, sometimes this is corrected with peach.