What skin tone means
Skin tone is two things, and most of the confusion about it comes from treating them as one. The first is depth: how light or deep the skin is, which is mostly how much melanin it carries. The second is undertone: the color cast beneath the surface, decided by the mix of pigments rather than the amount. Depth runs from fair to deep. Undertone comes in four kinds: warm, cool, neutral and olive.
The two are independent. Two people at the same depth can have different undertones, and every undertone exists at every depth. Depth also moves with sun, season and hormones; undertone mostly stays put. If a foundation goes orange on you in winter as well as summer, that is undertone talking, not depth.
The skin tone test reports both axes in nine questions, with no photo needed.
Skin tone chart
The chart groups depth into five bands, each a pair of adjacent swatches on the ten-step Monk Skin Tone scale. The bands are wide on purpose: skin changes across the year, and a pair gives it room to move. The names column lists the words shade ranges use for each band; they are marketing labels, not measurements, and the same name sits at different depths in different brands.
| Band | Swatches (1–10) | Names you will see | Undertones found here | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | 1–2 | porcelain, ivory, alabaster, pale | warm, cool, neutral, olive | Fair skin tone |
| Light | 3–4 | light, beige, sand, cream | warm, cool, neutral, olive | below |
| Medium | 5–6 | medium, honey, golden, tawny, light brown | warm, cool, neutral, olive | below |
| Tan | 7–8 | tan, caramel, almond, bronze, copper | warm, cool, neutral, olive | Caramel skin tone |
| Deep | 9–10 | deep, mocha, espresso, cocoa, mahogany, ebony | warm, cool, neutral, olive | below |
Every band has all four undertones, so no name in the middle column says anything about warm or cool. And "olive" is missing from the names column because it is not a depth. Charts that list Fair / Light / Medium / Olive / Tan / Deep have put an undertone on the depth axis, which is why olive people at other depths cannot find themselves on them. Olive has its own guide.
Fair skin tone
Swatches 1–2, the lightest pair. With this little melanin, veins read blue on almost everyone and the lightest shades in most ranges are pink or peach whatever the label says, so the product tests matter more than the visual ones here. The fair skin tone guide covers warm, cool and neutral at this depth.
Light skin tone
Swatches 3–4. Most ranges are built around this band, so shade choice is widest and the W / C / N labels are most likely to mean what they say. If you were matched "neutral" by default and neutral shades go gray on you, read the light olive section before settling.
Medium skin tone
Swatches 5–6. Medium is the band most often called "olive", and the two words are not the same: medium is a depth, olive is an undertone, and most medium skin is warm, cool or neutral. Ranges here lean golden, so a cool or neutral medium often finds every shade slightly orange; the fix is a neutral-cool shade at the same depth, not a lighter one. Medium olive is in the olive guide.
Tan skin tone
Swatches 7–8, the band ranges usually call caramel. Shelves at this depth assume warmth, so "everything goes orange on me" is common and is not by itself a sign of being warm. The caramel skin tone guide covers warm, cool and neutral here and how to tell a shelf problem from an undertone problem. Tan olive is in the olive guide.
Deep skin tone
Swatches 9–10. Deep skin can be warm, cool, neutral or olive. The assumption that deeper skin is warm comes from how shade ranges are built, not from skin, and it is why so many deep shades go orange or red on people who are not warm. Veins usually cannot be read here, so the useful tests are the product ones: which foundation family fails, and what a coral blush does on bare skin. Deep olive is in the olive guide.
Undertones
Undertone decides which shades sit on the skin and which sit on top of it. There are four; most tests only return three, and that gap is where a lot of bad matches come from.
Warm undertone
Golden or peachy pigment dominates: warm shades sit naturally, pink shades look off. Start in the W, G or "golden" range at your depth. Coral, peach and brick keep their color; yellow gold reads cleaner than silver. If a warm shade turns orange, it is too warm rather than too deep: step to neutral-warm at the same depth.
Cool undertone
Pink or rosy pigment dominates: cool shades sit naturally, golden shades go orange. Start in the C, R or "rose" range at your depth. Berry, blue-red and mauve keep their color; silver and white gold read cleaner than yellow gold. Cool holds at every depth, and cool deep skin will find most of its range too orange until it reaches the neutral-cool shades.
Neutral undertone
Neither pink nor golden dominates. That is not the same as "any shade works": with temperature settled, depth and how muted a shade is decide whether a product sits, and most neutrals still lean slightly one way. Start in the N range and nudge toward the lean. If neutral shades go gray on you rather than sitting quietly, check for olive.
Olive undertone
Skin that carries yellow and blue pigment together. Next to someone of the same depth it reads slightly grayer or more khaki, so warm shades go orange, cool shades go pink and most neutral shades go gray. Olive is an undertone, not a depth, and it can lean warm or cool. It is the undertone most often mislabeled warm (because of the yellow) or neutral (because nothing else fits). The olive skin tone guide covers the three-swatch check and what changes at each depth.
Undertone is half of a color season. The other half is how deep and how muted your overall coloring is, and the two together are what the color palette guides are organized by. Find the undertone first; the season follows.
Nine questions, no photo. Returns your depth band and one of four undertones, with the answers that decided it.
Common mistakes when working out your skin tone
Most wrong answers come from shortcuts built into the tests and the shade ranges.
- Treating olive as a depth. Charts that put olive between medium and tan force fair and deep olives to pick a depth that is not theirs, then hand them a warm shade.
- Assuming deeper skin is warm. Shelves get redder and more orange as they get deeper, so people at the tan and deep bands are matched warm by default. Deep skin can be cool-toned; warm shades going orange is the evidence.
- Reading yellow as warm. A yellowish cast next to white paper does not settle undertone. Yellow by itself is not a sign of warmth; cool and olive skin can look yellowish and still go orange in every warm shade. Foundation and coral blush are more reliable than the color you see.
- Using hair or eye color as evidence. Neither changes the pigment in your skin, and on deep skin both collapse to "dark", which is how some apps file every deep-skinned user under one season.
- Using a place or a heritage as a skin tone. Searches for the skin tone of a country or a community expect one answer, and there is not one: any group of people spans several depths and all four undertones. Skin tone describes one person's skin, and the two axes above describe it completely.
Fitzpatrick and Monk scales
Two scales come up whenever skin tone is discussed, and they measure different things.
The Fitzpatrick scale has six types, I to VI, and classifies how skin responds to sun: whether it burns, whether it tans, and how readily. It was designed for dermatology, it is a rough proxy for depth, and it says nothing about undertone. A type III can be warm, cool, neutral or olive.
The Monk Skin Tone scale (MST) has ten swatches and classifies color rather than sun response. It was developed by the sociologist Ellis Monk and published with Google as a broader alternative to Fitzpatrick for evaluating cameras and image systems. The five bands on this page are the ten MST swatches taken in pairs. MST does not encode undertone either.
FAQ
Short answers to the questions asked most often about skin tone.
How do I identify my skin tone?
Match the inside of your forearm to a swatch pair in daylight for depth, then use the product tests for undertone: which foundation family fails at your depth, and what a coral blush does on bare skin. The skin tone test runs both in nine questions.
What are the four types of skin tones?
It depends which axis is meant. On the undertone axis there are four: warm, cool, neutral and olive. On the depth axis this page uses five bands from the ten-swatch Monk scale. Lists like "fair, medium, olive and dark" are mixing the two.
What is the rarest skin tone or undertone?
There is no agreed definition to count by, so any figure online is a guess. Neutral and olive look rarer than they are because most tests only return warm or cool, and cool deep skin looks rarer than it is because deep ranges are built warm.
What is the prettiest undertone?
There is not one. Undertone is a pigment mix, not a ranking. What reads as "pretty" in a photo is usually a match between skin and color, and every undertone has a full range of matches.
How do I figure out what colors go best with my skin tone?
Start from undertone: warm takes golden and peachy colors, cool takes rosy and blue-based ones, neutral goes by how muted a shade is, and olive goes by muted versus bright. Then add depth and contrast, which together make a color season. The color analysis reads all of that from a photo.
Does skin tone change over time?
Depth does, with sun, season, pregnancy and some medications, usually by no more than a band. Undertone is mostly stable, which is why a shade that goes orange in winter also goes orange in summer at a deeper number. Retest depth when the season changes; retest undertone only if your products start behaving differently.