The ToneMatch Method™ Melissa Murdick Start

Step 1

Know Your Tone™

Figure out where your skin sits on the spectrum from cool to warm. This is your undertone and it's the key to discovering your best shades.

Makeup shades arranged from cool to warm

Guided self-check

Where do you lean?

Five quick questions. Not sure what to look for yet? The guided walkthrough just below teaches you — you can come back to this any time. There are no wrong answers, and "a mix" is a real result. You'll end up with a hypothesis to test, not a label to take as gospel.

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The walkthrough

Let's talk color temperature

In The ToneMatch Method, undertone refers solely to color temperature — where a color lands on the spectrum from cool to warm.

You can , but to keep things simple, to determine your skin's undertone you only need to look for the presence of orange.

A color spectrum showing pheomelanin pigment, with orange marked as peak warmth

Strongly visible orange pigment signifies warmth in the skin and the absence of any orange pigment signifies coolness in skin. People who have some orange mixed into their skin tone will lean more neutral.

Examples of skin showing strong orange warmth, some orange, and no visible orange

Grab a mirror and analyze your skin

For color accuracy, it's best to grab a mirror and sit next to a window that has good natural light coming in. Ensure that your skin is makeup and self-tanner free.

Sitting beside a window in natural light, looking into a hand mirror

Ignore any areas of surface discoloration (like surface redness, dark spots, etc). In the rest of your skin, look for the level of orangey-ness coming through. Very pale or very deep skin tones may make this less easy to see, so assess to the best of your ability and then move on to the next step.

Compare to confirm

Look back and forth between the mirror and the examples of each undertone category displayed here. Where does it most look like you fit in? That's your undertone.

  • Cool undertone examples across a full range of skin depths

    Cool

  • Neutral undertone examples across a full range of skin depths

  • Warm undertone examples across a full range of skin depths

    Warm

  • Cool Neutral undertone examples across a full range of skin depths

    Cool Neutral

  • Warm Neutral undertone examples across a full range of skin depths

    Warm Neutral

Keep in mind you may be between two categories. Melissa herself is cool neutral, and warm neutral exists as well.

Test out Your Tone

Feeling unsure about your analysis is totally normal. Now that you have a 'hypothesis' about your tone, you will be able to confirm it as you move through Steps 2 & 3 of The ToneMatch Method.

If you thought you were cool toned and start to realize that cool shades don't look right on you, that can help you reverse-engineer Your Tone. Maybe you're more neutral (or actually warm!). Comparison is your best friend. Testing out shades will give you the data you need to feel more confident over time.

Melissa swatching foundation and lip shades onto paper beside a Pantone fan, brushes, lipsticks and eyeshadow palettes

Ready for what's next?

Next: Decode The Shade → Or start shopping now

A little deeper

The science behind skin tone

Although factors like hemoglobin, collagen, etc can influence our skin tone, skin color comes primarily from melanin, which exists in two forms: eumelanin, which reads brown to black, and pheomelanin, which reads yellow, red, or orange. Everyone carries a mix of both in varying amounts.

Diagram of eumelanin and pheomelanin pigment and the colors each produces

Pheomelanin is what we look for to determine undertone.

More orange pheomelanin showing through pushes the skin's undertone toward the warm end of the spectrum; less of it leaves the skin reading cooler.

That's why the method has you look for the presence of orange rather than any shortcut: it's the visible trace of the warm pigment itself.

Depth of skin tone (how light or deep you are) is a separate axis — every undertone exists at every depth.

Every skin tone also has an overall color (pink, golden, olive, caramel, cocoa etc) but that color will lean towards a particular undertone (warm, neutral, cool).

Despite popular myths that tell you yellow skin = warm, pink skin = cool, and olive is somehow its own undertone, ANY skin tone has variations that lean warm, cool, or somewhere in between.

Two forearms side by side, both olive, one labelled cool olive and the other warm olive