Whilst this shouldn’t be used a rule and you can wear whatever colour you love best, it is good to know the best colour bikini or swimsuit to wear based on which ones compliment your skin tone. Here’s a quick guide to help you determine your skin tone and choose the best colour bikini, swimsuit or piece of beachwear that will bring out your natural beauty on holiday and give you a glow like no other.
Find out your skin tone
Skin tones generally fall into one of two categories : warm and cool. There are three ways you can work out whether you are a warm or a cool skin tone.
1. Hold something pure white under your chin; a towel, say, or a big sheet of paper. If your skin has a slightly yellow hue, your skin tone is warm; if it’s slightly blue, your skin tone is cool. Make sure you remove any make up first, and do the test in natural light.
2. Have a look at the underside of your arm and wrists. Has your skin got pink or blue undertones and do your veins appear blue? If so, you have a cool skin tone. Does your skin have a more yellow hue and do your veins appear more green? Then your skin tone is warm.
3. Do you suit gold better than silver? If so, your skin tone is warm. If silver looks better on you, your skin tone is cool.
Warm Skin Tones
Warm skin tones can be light, medium or dark, but the undertones are golden or caramel, as opposed to pink or blue. People with warm skin tones generally have hair that has hints of orange, yellow, red or gold with eyes that warm yellow browns, dark brown, hazel or green.
Cool Skin Tones
Cool skin tones range from being very pale and porcelain with no cheek colour, to darker skin with pink or red undertones, as opposed to golden undertones. When cool skin tone tans, it has a reddy tinge, rather than a golden hue. This is the most common skin tone and is easy to dress. Hair often has hints of blue, violet, silver and ash undertones with eye colours ranging from blue, grey, green, black and cool brown colours.
Neutral Skin Tones
It is possible to have a neutral skin tone, which is great for most colour choices and they tend to have features of both warm and cool toned individuals.
Your Season
Once you’re armed with your basic skin tone, you can look further into it, like whether you’re summer, winter, autumn or spring, but knowing your general tone will help you choose the swimwear that’ll bring out the best in you on the beach.
Winter and Summer are cool tones with blue based palettes and should wear colours with blue undertones. Winter type hair normally contrasts with their skin dramatically but skin can range from light to dark. Ruby, Sapphire, Black, White and Steel Grey shades work well with Winter types. Summer types tend to have a more gentle contrast between skin and hair and look good in icy or shiny colours such as muted grey, aqua and rose.
Spring and Autumn have yellow based palettes and are considered warm skin tone types. Spring tends to look best in bright playful colours such as peaches, bright true red, greens and browns with yellow undertones, whereas Autumn’s look great in warm, soft and deep colours such as forest green, navy, burnt orange, caramel and tomato red.
According to Von Luschan’s (an 1800’s ethnographer) Chromatic Scale, there a range of tones within these categories that can be numbered from 1-36 with one being the very light ‘Celtic’ type of skin tone and 36 being a very dark ‘Black’ skin type so you can lean toward one type more than the other or be in between.
The Best Colours For Your Skin Tone
Warm Skin Tones
Warm skin tones best suit warm, natural earthy colours such as sage green, mocha, bronze, mango, burnt orange, olive green, gold, deep tomato red, dark brown, deep yellow.
Cool Skin Tones
Cool skin tones suit deep, rich, vivid jewel colours such as emerald green, ruby red, raspberry, plum and sapphire blue as well as more muted tones like dusky pink, lavender and powder blue.
On the wheel below it is easy to see the divide between bright jewel colours and dark earthy tones, but it is also easy to see the subtle variations of colour and can easily feel over complicated. Knowing the basics will really help you decide.
Using the Colour Wheel
The colour wheel is great for helping you put colour combinations together that compliment your skin tone and each other. In swimwear it’s great for mixing and matching tops and bottoms as well as coordinating with jewellery.
Analog colours are the colours either side of a chosen colour on the wheel which are naturally harmonious, such as orange yellow and yellow with golden yellow in the middle.
Complimentary colours are directly opposite each other on the wheel which means they contrast and stand out against each other. Complimentary colours are great for highlighting a certain colour whilst keeping it harmonious.
Split complimentary colours give an outfit a contrast but without being as intense as a straight complimentary colour. An example of a split complimentary colour is yellow with either blue-violet or red-violet.
Triad colours make use of three shades from the colour wheel that have seven shades in between each one. For example Chartreuse, Blue-Red and Cerulean Blue.
Other colour schemes that are useful are Monotone Chromatic which is when one hue is used with varying tints and shades of the same hue.
Monotone Achromatic schemes use neutral shades from black to white and are often great when using one bright colour for a highlight. Brown is also a neutral shade along with gold and silver so can be mixed easily.
We shared tips how to choose the right swimsuit, now feel free to learn how to look after your swimwear.
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