Overtone vs. Undertone

Happy day, dear reader!

Hope your week has been full of only the pleasant kind of surprises! Today I want to talk about a color quality that people often confuse, undertone and overtone. Specifically as it pertains to choosing colors, whether for clothing or makeup.

I often hear people say they are a Spring, Summer, Winter or Fall. They know that their coloring is cool (Summer and Winter) or warm (Spring and Fall). They understand that if their coloring is cool, they will look better in cool colors, and if warm, warm colors. This is an oversimplification that leaves out lots of other variables like value and intensity, but is, in general, correct. Warm colors suit warm complexions. Cool colors suit cool complexions.

Undertone

When you are typed Warm or Cool, the typing should be based on the undertone of your skin. Your skin’s undertone is determined by the chemistry of the pigments that give you your personal coloring. Everyone’s skin has the same three pigments. It’s the amounts of each that create the beautiful diversity of human coloring!

Depending on your personal chemical cocktail, your undertone can be warm (yellow based) or cool (blue based). You may have heard people talk about the “wrist test.” Warm skinned people are supposed to have veins with a greenish cast, and cool skinned people are supposed to have veins with a blue cast. This isn’t particularly precise, as the lighting, depth of the veins, and transparency of the skin all play into what color you will see in your wrists.

To further confuse things, skin can have a conflicting overtone and undertone. For example, a very ruddy olive-complexion looks pink (cool) even though the undertone is warm. Or suntanned cool complexion may look warm when it’s not! Although the same pigments affect hair color, hair color alone is not a determinant of skin tone, as brown and blonde hair can be warm or cool. The only hair color that does signify skin undertone is red. (Naturally red, not colored red, or sun-bleached brown!) Natural red-heads are warm complexioned; they have an abundance of carotene that colors both their hair and skin…  Coloring your hair does not change your skin’s undertone!

Overtone

Overtone is the “feeling” we get from a color. Do we associate the color with warmth? Or with coolness? Humans associate yellow, red, orange, and pink with warm. Think sunshine, firelight, and flushed faces. We associate blues, greens, and purples with cool. The feeling of running water, shady trees, blue fingers in the snow. On a color wheel, the overtone of the colors on the wheel are labeled.  Yellow Green through to Violet are labeled as cool on the right hand side of the wheel.  The left hand side, Yellow through Red Violet, is labeled warm.

Playing Together

Once you know your undertone, it should be a snap to choose colors that are good for you, right? Not necessarily… Does the color have more yellow in it? Or no yellow at all? A great example is green. There are thousands of shades of green, some warm and some cool, but on a color wheel, green is labeled in the cool colors. Cool greens look better on cool complexioned people, and warm greens on warm complexioned people. Although Yellow-Green has a cool overtone, it has a warm undertone! This is why many shades of olive look wonderful on those with a warm complexion; most olives are yellow based. There are warm and cool pinks, purples, yellows, reds, browns, greys; all colors (except orange) have both warm and cool variations! I hear people say, “I’m warm, so I can’t wear blue.” This isn’t true. There are warm blues out there for them! White and black aren’t colors (by definition) but they are both cool. Thus the Undertone/Overtone Confusion!

Long ago when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I was in university. During the height of the seasonal color typing heyday, the mother of a hall-mate came to visit and type the young women living on our wing. Since I had dark brown hair and green/brown hazel eyes, I was promptly placed in the Fall/Autumn category. I was confused; I knew the colors of Fall made me look like the dog’s dinner. Charcoal grey, bright blues, and bright pinks were great colors for me, and camel, orange and olive made me look like the paramedics needed to be called! So I wrote the whole thing off as rubbish. (I was young, and judgemental.)

Thirty some-odd years later, I understand that hair and eye color aren’t the keys. When I color type a client, it’s all about the skin! When we work, I give them not only their swatch, but also a color wheel, and we talk about the skin chemistry that gives them their coloring and all the variations of value and intensity that come into play. These tools and teaching help them make flattering color choices for themselves. We also talk about how to wear those colors that aren’t ideal. The very nuanced Absolute Color System, with its 18 different color palettes , was designed to take into account all skin tones, and the combinations of warm and cool that genetic diversity creates. And for the natural changes that occur to our skin and hair color as we age… (There’s a reason the hair color we had at 20 doesn’t flatter us anymore at 50!)

Look More Closely

Next time you are at the shops, take a closer look at the colors you see. What’s the overtone? What’s the undertone? This is especially important when choosing makeup colors! The wrong undertone is often why a new lipstick, or blush never looks quite right, or only flatters when you have a good tan! If you keep buying bronzer, hoping to find one that give you that sun-kissed look, but keep on finding it makes you look “dirty,” I’d venture a guess that your complexion is cool. I’d LOVE to have all the money that I spent on bronzers over the years, looking for the one for me! There isn’t one. And that’s ok!

HINT: If a shop assistant tells you that the blouse or dress you just tried on simply needs a brighter lipstick to look “perfect,” that’s a sure sign that the color isn’t a good one for you! That’s an example of the color wearing you, rather than you wearing the color… Thank him or her kindly, walk away, and save your hard earned money on something in a color that works for you, and not against you!

So how about you? Have you ever had your coloring “typed”? Was it a good experience, or leave something to be desired? Are your favorite colors more in the warm overtone group or the cools? I love to hear from you! Let’s start a conversation in the comments below!

Stylishly yours,

Thank you to Shelbee at Shelbee on the Edge, and Nancy at Nancy’s Fashion Style for the Link-Ups! You ladies are fabulous!