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August 7, 2019 17 mins

Determining your undertones is a hot topic in color analysis. Most people believe that it’s the magic pill to figuring out what colors you should wear. I think that learning your undertones helps you know what colors to avoid. 

In this episode we take a deep dive into understanding cool undertones. How do you know if you have cool undertones... what does that actually mean... what colors you should wear and what colors to avoid.

Please visit Your Color Style to discover more info and products on learning your best colors. And please email support@yourcolorstyle.com with any comments or questions you may have.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the your color style podcast where we
believe the more you know aboutcolor, the more you'll know what
colors flatter you best.
I'm your host Jen[inaudible].
We are continuing the series onthe your color style color
analysis methodology.
So the last episode on thistopic we talked about

(00:26):
undertones, specifically warmundertones.
So I'm going to continue thattopic in this episode focused on
cool undertones, and thenthere'll be a third one for
neutral undertones.
So keep an eye out for that oneas well.
And if you missed the one onwarm undertones, you might want
to go back and listen to it.
There's a lot of greatinformation if you're trying to

(00:46):
learn or figure out whatundertones you have, you'll want
to listen to that one also.
Okay, you might have a lightbulb moment there.
So what does it mean when I sayundertones?
The definition is the coloringthat is just underneath your
skin.
It directly affects your overallcoloring.
Determining your undertones is areally hot topic in color

(01:10):
analysis.
Most people believe that it'sthe magic pill and if you know
your undertones, then you canfigure out what colors you could
wear.
I definitely think that learningwhat your undertones are helps
you know what colors to avoid.
One of the things that I get alot, and I totally get it

(01:31):
because I'm the same way, youknow, what am I, what are my
undertones?
Am I warm or am I cool?
I feel like I'm neutral and if Ican just figure out this one
thing that I'll know what colorsto wear.
The reality is is that there's alot of colors that we can wear
for warm water tones, coolundertones.

(01:53):
If you feel neutral, there's alot of colors that you can wear.
And so I like to think aboutlearning about your undertones
as helping you to learn whatcolors to avoid.
Because really what we'relooking at is not only what
colors really make you glow, butalso just what colors don't look
good on you at all.
I think that would be more ofthe focus.

(02:16):
So I created these episodes onundertones to help you figure
out where you fit, but also togive you some guidelines to help
you know and understand whatcolors you might want to avoid
because they might, you know,make you look a little tired or
sick or just kind of drain youoverall.
So there are warm undertones,cool undertones, and people

(02:40):
argue with me for sure thatthere are neutral undertones and
we'll definitely have an entireepisode focused just on neutral
because I know that a lot ofpeople feel very neutral.
They don't really feel like theylook warm or cool.
So we'll definitely addressthat.
How do you know if you have coolundertones?
What, what is that?

(03:00):
So for lighter skin individuals,you're likely going to have a
very pink quality to your skin.
You could have a very porcelain,like almost white quality to
your skin or maybe even a grayish quality to your skin.
Really you have kind of theabsence of warmth as the,
especially the lighter your skingoes, the, the more that this is

(03:23):
true, the really of an absenceof warmth.
Okay.
For darker skin individuals.
It may be that you have a blueor red quality to your Brown
skin.
It's not going to be yellow andit's not going to have a golden
quality.
It's going to be more of a bluetent or red tent to it.
Okay.

(03:44):
In general, silver really workswell on you.
Gold doesn't seem to look asgood as silver and in fact, in
many cases gold may not lookgood at good on you at all.
It just may not look right, butsilver for sure, no matter what.
Alright, your eyes could also bea clue.
You could have cool blue eyes,blue, gray eyes, a cool Hazel.

(04:09):
This is the kind of eye thatreally trips people up.
Hazel is an eye color that isn'treally a color.
It's a blend of colors andtypically it's a blend of Browns
, blues, yellows, greens.
It's not really green.
It's really combination ofyellow and blue in your eye.
And so you have this mix of aneye color that can feel very

(04:34):
earthy and therefore feel verywarm.
And so someone who is trying tofigure out if they have warm
undertones or cool undertonessees their eyes as this warm
Hazel and gets very confused andrightly so because I've met many
people who have cool undertones,but they have these beautiful,
almost golden quality of eyesand it sort of contradicts the

(04:58):
definition.
The best way I can describe acool Hazel versus a warm Hazel
is in many cases someone who haswarm Hazel eyes is when when the
light hits it, their eyes almostlook have a golden yellow
quality about them.
For someone that's got coolHazel, you could almost see like
a blue tint to their eye, eventhough it's Browns and yellows

(05:23):
and stuff.
So it's, it's, it really didtake some practice to see which
ones are cool and which ones arewarm.
But I kind of hope that thathelps that Hazel having Hazel
eyes does not mean that you havewarm water tones.
You could still have coolundertones with Hazel eyes.
Okay.
Also, let's not forget aboutsuper dark eyes.

(05:44):
Eyes are almost black usually,or people with cool undertones.
All right, your eyes basicallyfor the most part have an
absence of warmth compared tosomeone with eyes.
Um, again, why they usually havesome kind of warm quality to it,
some kind of golden quality toit.

(06:04):
All right?
So there are definitelyexceptions to these rules
because someone with a copperyred hair and blue eyes may
actually have warm undertones.
I've actually seen it both ways.
I've seen people with red hairand blue eyes that have cool
undertones and I've seen peoplewith red hair and blue eyes to
have a woman or tone.
So it's not always black andwhite when it comes to this.

(06:24):
There are rules that definitelyare broken.
Let's talk about the hairquality now.
Hair, um, color can definitelyinfluence your color palette.
So we have white hair or grayhair that really, um, typically
implies that you have coolundertones, shiny black hair,

(06:45):
ashy Brown hair.
Those are all qualities of coolundertones, especially when you
pair those, those, uh, haircolors with cool eyes.
It's really hard to be anythingelse.
If you've got kind of those, thelack of pigment in your hair and
you've got cool eyes, like blueeyes, you'd likely have cool

(07:07):
undertones.
Uh, gray hair blends, uh, likegray with blonde hair or with
Brown hair.
That can definitely confusethings.
Um, like my husband for example,he has a blend of gray and like
a Brown and like almost like ablonde all in his hair.
He has cool undertones, but Ican definitely see how that

(07:29):
blend of hair can definitelyconfuse things cause you have
this a little bit of warmth inyour hair, right?
So more often than not, um, Ifind people that had that great
blend to be more cool than warm.
But again, not always the case.
I've seen many women with grayhair that fall into all three

(07:50):
categories.
Warm, cool and neutral.
In fact, just the other day, um,I, I, we went to this winery and
there was this a woman that waspouring the wine and she at
first glance had white hair,very fair light eyes, light
skin.
But you know, I'm alwayssecretly color analysis people

(08:11):
and as I'm looking at her Irealize that she does not have
cool undertones.
She's actually very warm.
She didn't necessarily have likeobvious warmth in her skin, but
her eyes had a very nice softgreen, blue qualities, a lot of
warmth and her hair actuallyRose it really white, had a
little bit of a yellow qualityto it, a blog, a very faint

(08:35):
blonde quality to it.
And so she, even though her hairwas uh, air quote white really
had more of warm undertones.
So the bottom line here is this,I'm going to give you a lot of
information to help you figureout what your undertones are and
if you have cool undertones ornot, but please treat these as

(08:56):
guidelines because everybody'svery unique.
And although there is, you know,main categories of people, there
are so many unique combinationsthat come my way that these are
just guidelines just to help youand especially to help you know
what colors to avoid.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
I'll get back to talking about cool undertones in
just a moment.
If you've been trying to figureout what colors flatter you
best, but all that informationout there is confusing.
Take the quiz@yourcolorstyle.comslash quiz it's absolutely free
and has lots of photos to helpyou figure out what types of

(09:37):
colors will look best on you.
So go to your colorstyle.com/quiz

Speaker 1 (09:54):
there are myths about determining your, your
undertones that I honestly justdon't agree with.
Let's talk about vain color.
This is one that I get all thetime and I think it really
confuses just about everyone.
I get questions like my veinsare blue, but I am pretty sure I
have warm undertones.
I personally can't tell whatcolor my veins are.

(10:18):
I mean, I totally get why peoplelike it.
Like, like this rule.
I mean if your skin is veryyellow, your veins will look
green.
Um, but for darker skinnedwomen, they really can't use
this rule.
All of skin tone.
Women definitely can't use thisrule because their skin's
already kind of neutral and alittle on the green side, the

(10:42):
vein, the test doesn't work.
So it really only works forpeople who are very fair and are
on the extremes of warm andcool.
And you look at your veins andyeah, okay, maybe that will be
an indicator.
If you have very fair skin andyour veins are obviously very,
very blue, maybe you have coolundertones, but I'm not a fan of
the vain test.

(11:04):
Silver versus gold can also besomething that a is misleading.
If you are fair and cool, youcan likely wear both silver and
gold.
The lighter you go and thedarker you go, you tend to kind
of fall into these neutralcategories.

(11:24):
Um, so, and what that means isthat you can kind of span the
spectrum of colors from warm tocool, a little easier than
someone that's more in themiddle range of, of a color
types.
Okay.
So if you're very fair, even ifyou have cool undertones, you'd
likely can wear gold jewelry andsilver jewelry.

(11:44):
Okay.
And so saying that you can weargold doesn't always mean that
you have warm undertones burningversus tanning.
This another one, every one isdifferent.
Being able to tan does not meanthat you have warm or cool
undertones.
I have warm undertones and Iburned pretty easily.

(12:05):
Again, also in this rule, weleave out the Brown skin and all
skinned women in thisdescription.
I mean I would absolutely agreethat if you are very fair, you
have, if you have pink orporcelain skin, you probably
don't hand you just proud.
You probably just get a littlePinker.
Then you probably have coolertones, but outside of that, I'm

(12:28):
not convinced that that's anindicator, a true indicator of
cool or warm undertones.
Okay, so colors that will helpyou know if you have cool
undertones.
If you can wear like a bluepurple or magenta pink really
well, you likely have coolundertones.

(12:48):
Those colors really don'tflatter people with warm
undertones and colors that well.
There are colors that you'll saythat you can wear, so you must
have warm undertones or coolundertones.
But honestly they're justuniversal colors and they really
don't help.
These are colors like true red,true yellow, green, blue and

(13:10):
purple are all colors thatreally don't tell you whether or
not you have warm or coolundertones.
I get a lot of people that tellme that I can, you know, Oh I
can wear blue really well so Imust have blue undertones or I
can wear blue really well, butso I don't understand how I
could possibly have warmundertones.
These are just universal colorsthere.
They're the primary colors.

(13:32):
They're perfectly balanced.
If you can find them and they'rejust, they don't really tell you
if you were, if you can wearthat color, whether or not you
have warm or cool undertones.
Cause anybody can wear a truered, not necessarily a warm
orangy red or a blue red.
That's when things get a littlefunny.
But a true red anybody can wear.

(13:54):
Um, now if you're thinking forone moment that, well, the
colors you're mentioningactually don't look good on me,
but I don't think I've got womanor tones.
Well, the reality is is thatit's possible that those colors
might be too bright.
So one of the things that'sreally important to know when
you're trying to figure out thecolors that are gonna flatter
you really well and the colorsthat you should avoid is to know

(14:17):
if you are soft or bright.
All right?
If you're soft, then you canwear the more muted colors.
So you may look really beautifulin a soft magenta, pink or a
soft blue purple, that kind of athing, not the bright colors
because um, this just may notwork on you if you've got soft

(14:38):
tones.
And the same is true if you arebright, if you wear brighter
colors really well, you havebrightness to your eyes and hair
and the brighter colors lookreally well than the bright
colors might might work well.
So make sure that you know, ifyou are brighter, soft, there's
lots of information about thison the
website@yourcolorstyle.com.
If you're trying to figure outbrighter soft effect, the quiz

(15:00):
will help you also understandthis concept little bit more
because a lot of times whencolors don't look good, it's not
because it's the wrongtemperature, it's because it's
the wrong chroma.
It might be too bright or toosoft for you.
Okay.
So I know lots to think about,but it's kind of important.
Also colors to avoid.

(15:21):
If you have cool undertones, mynumber one recommendation is to,
is to avoid colors with goldenHughes, golden oranges, golden
Browns, camel Browns, uh, thatkind of, you know, even reds
that are really more orangeyreds.
Those kind of things are justreally not going to look good on

(15:43):
you.
Stick to the cool colors on thecolor wheel.
There's lots of information outon the blog about that.
And um, and then the warm colorsthat you definitely can.
Where is the true red in thetrue yellow?
Okay.
Um, if yellow is starting tolook orange, then it's probably
not the right color for you.

(16:04):
Next week on the your colorstyle podcast, we're going to
continue the series onundertones and we're going to be
talking about neutral undertonesand olive skin tone.
So if you fit into thatcategory, you don't want to miss
it.
If you're trying to figure outyour color type, take the
quiz@yourcolorstyle.com slashquiz it's absolutely free, and

(16:25):
we'll walk you through step bystep with photos to help you
figure out what colors willflatter at you best.
Thank you so much for listeningto the your color style podcast,
where we believe the more youknow about color, the more
you'll know what color

Speaker 3 (17:01):
[inaudible].
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