The biggest nail trend colour this summer has to be pastels. Nails in all the beautiful soft colours of the rainbow. But something we’re often asked is ‘do pastels suit every skin tone?’, and ‘how do you know what colours will work best on your nails?’. The answer to the first question is that while not every pastel suits every skin tone, there are groups of pastel colours that work best on different skin tones. We’ll help you discover what your skin tone is and the pastel colours to complement it.
Understanding skin tone and skin undertone
There are generally three categories of skin tone:
Light
Medium
Dark
However, the key to finding the most flattering pastel colours to suit your skin tone starts with your skin undertone which is divided into three categories:
Cool
Warm
Neutral
While your skin tone may change in appearance due to exposure to the sun or other elements, your skin undertone will always remain the same. And it does not necessarily mean that if you have a light skin tone that you’ll have a cool undertone. You may have a light skin tone with a warm undertone or a dark skin tone with a cool undertone.
The key to choosing the right pastel to complement your skin tone is discovering what your skin undertone is and matching the colour to that.
Discovering your skin undertone
There are a few ways to find out what your skin undertone is but one of the best ways is the 'vein test'.
In natural light, look at the appearance of your veins underneath your skin. You have:
Cool undertone: If your veins appear blue or purple.
Warm undertone: If your veins appear green or greenish blue.
Neutral undertone: If it’s hard to determine whether your veins are blue or green.
Choosing the right pastel colour for your skin undertone
For colours that complement your skin tone and make everything look like it’s working in harmony, here’s a simple guide of pastel colours to suit your skin undertone:
For cool undertones: Choose baby blues, powder blues, lavenders and light pinks.
For warm undertones: Choose fluorescent lemon, deep lavender, aqua, teals and cream.
For neutral undertones: Choose buttery yellows, light greys, mint greens, light pinks, soft peach and light orange.
But remember, regardless of what colour suits your skin tone, the most important thing is that the colour you choose for your nails brings you a little bit of joy. Because nails are fun and beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.