When choosing your foundation, look in the mirror without any makeup and try to determine what is the most dominant pigmentation underneath your skin: white, blue, pink or yellow. Choose a foundation with that pigment, and then try it at the base of your jawline and wait two minutes for it to oxidize; and if you’re still unsure, try it on your neck and chest, too. It should match your natural skin colour as best as possible.
If your primary skin pigment is yellow, you should stick with golden tones that can vary between ivory and matte beige. For red pigmented skin, look at pinks ranging from pink ivories to peachy colours. In brown or olive pigmented skins, look at yellows, browns and beiges. If you’re more golden, a beigey gold foundation will work great (it’s also the ideal skin colour). In the eventuality that red, yellow and brown are all equally prominent colours in your skin, use coppery tan colours.
If you need to correct anything on your skin, for example under eye bags or pesky pimples, always use a complimentary colour. So, on red imperfections, apply a green colour; on blue, apply orange; and on yellow, apply violet. Then dab on a concealer 1-2 shades lighter than your foundation colour over the imperfections.
Always remember:
- Orange is used to neutralize blue veins and dark circles
- Lilac is to neutralize the yellow in a skin tone and to lighten your complexion (i.e. Hindu)
- Green is to neutralize the red or pink in someone’s face, and it can also be mixed with a peachy foundation to make it more beige
- Yellow is to lighten the foundation and give more luminosity to your face so long as you already have some yellow in your pigmentation
- White is used to lighten a foundation colour. Never use this pigment if you are dark since you have no white pigment in your skin.
I hope this guide helps you to understand how to manipulate colours and how to choose colours best suited for your skin colour. If you have any questions, please ask me and I’ll do my best to help; if you can send over a picture of your skin, I’ll be able to answer you more accurately.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: color, colour, colours, concealer, cosmetic, foundation, make-up, pigment, pigmentation, skin
hello, this info is very useful. I have mild melasma on my upper lip, brown in colour. Regular concealers do not hide it, but i was wondering if orange might help? Thanks
Orange is not the opposite of brown. Basically, you can hide anything with an opposite colour. So, if your melasma is brown, then try a blue concealer on it, and then layer another concealer on top of the blue with the closest colour to your actual skin colour. Then, blend everything with the heat of your point finger by slowly, but with a firm pressure, going through the motion of fingerprinting. If you’re unsure of this movement, just look at any Hollywood booking scene, and notice how they take the finger and firmly press from side to side on the paper. That’s what you should do on your concealer. If you’re applying a foundation that is for oily skin (water-based), then it’s best to apply your foundation first because anytime you apply water on oil (concealer is always made with oil), it’ll just slide down off the oil. If you’re applying a foundation for normal to dry skin (oil-based), it’s great because you really don’t need to care in what order you apply your foundation and concealer.