Guest post - finding the right foundation shade

Hi guys! Today is something I haven't done before on my blog and it's my first guest post, today's guest is Ashleigh Sheard for House of Fraser, she emailed me and said she'd love to share with you how to find the right shade and type of foundation for your skin, if you have issues with this like me, then this is really interesting so carry on reading!

Tips to determine your skin tone:

If like me you struggle to find a foundation that matches your skin it is well worth determining your skin’s undertones and not just looking at your skin colour. While you obviously want your foundation to match your skin colour (no-one wants to be orange right?) it is also important to understand whether you are cool, warm or neutral toned. This is the difference between finding a foundation that looks good and finding a foundation that looks great. If you match your foundation to both you’ll be able to achieve that “Is she even wearing foundation?” look we all want.

So tips to find out your skin tone are as follows:

The most tried and tested tip I can give you is to look at your veins. We can all see them in our forearms and at our wrists, but have you ever really looked at them? Your veins are giving you clues to your skin tone and you didn’t even know it! If your veins appear to be a blue colour then you are likely to have a cool tone but if they are greenish in colour then you are warm toned.

You can also try using a white towel or white piece of cloth to determine skin tone. Place the cloth near your face or around your shoulders and look at your face in the mirror in a well lit room. Does your face appear to have a red or a yellow tint to it? If there is a red/pink tint to your face then you are cool toned and if there is a yellow tint this suggests warm undertones.

Then there’s the clothing test. Go to your wardrobe, do the colours of your clothes tend to lean in one direction, either warm earth tones or cool jewel tones? If you find you have a mixture of both do the same as the white cloth and try one of each on. No doubt you’ll prefer one to the other, but which colour look best on you? Warm toned people look best in earth tones where as cool toned people look great in jewel tones.

The same sort of test can be done with jewellery; with cool toned people’s skin looking better against silver and white gold jewellery and warm toned people looking better in rose gold. If you’ve tried the tips and seem to be coming up with some answers for warm and some answers for cool don’t worry this probably means that you are neutral toned. Neutral toned people are a mixture of the two and are quite lucky in the fact that most colours suit them. It can be a little more difficult to get an exact match with your makeup so you might need to try a blend of two different foundations.

Looking for make up once you have determined your skin tone should be much easier as you can already rule out any foundations with the wrong base colour. For those with warm toned skin, this means that you have yellow or golden undertones and therefore you want a foundation that matches this. Bobbi Brown is known for their yellow based foundations so this might be a good place to start. For anyone with a cool skin tone you are going to want to find a foundation that has a slight pink base to it. This will match your skin well and make your skin look more even.

There are lots of different brands that do pink based foundations but some to start off with would be Lancôme or Benefit. Neutral toned people can try a mixture of different foundations; you will need to experiment a little before you find your perfect match. The good news is that you can try a combination of pink and yellow based foundations but you may have to end up mixing your own in order to find a really perfect match.

What do you think of these techniques? Have you tried any? Will you be trying any?  If you're interested in doing a guest post on my blog, feel free to drop me an email at lovesprettywildthings@hotmail.co.uk !  
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