The skin tone: Understanding tone and sub tone of the skin

This post is also available in: Italiano

Introduction

Have you noticed that sometimes you look in the mirror and your face looks a bit ‘sickly? The color of your face looks a bit ‘off. The most marked dark circles. For what reason? On the contrary some days the face looks bright and the eyes more alive. With the same condition of health, there are simple but powerful reasons. The colors of the clothes you wear are related to the color of your skin and your hair. These are your colors in practice. After doing some extensive research I wanted to help you find your true skin tone. So that you can understand what colors would look best on you when you dress. I will go further into this in a future article. You ever notice how that guy with the blue eyes really looks so handsome when wearing that blue shirt. Or the girl with the green eyes wearing a deep blue dress suddenly her eyes glow even more? Here are the tips on how to learn what skin tone that you are so we can help you in the future with colorizing your closet.

The tone of the human skin, regardless of race, is divided into: cold, neutral and warm. I was looking for a valid method on the internet to be able to easily identify it. Although I found many interesting articles I wanted to go deeper and study a method to analyze the color of your skin. It is very easy and can be done by anyone.

Knowing the skin tone is important because it establishes which colors (clothes) will make your appearance look better. Defining your color palette is therefore a good start for a conscious and reasoned look.

Key information

Unfortunately, the internet is referred to under the skin tone  this is incorrect information. The skin is composed of several layers, the first is the epidermis (which provides the pigmentation) the second layer is the dermis. The dermis is red so the only color “under tone” of the skin is invariably red.

Learn more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidermis

Procedure to discover the skin tone

To perform my procedure the first thing to do is to have an image of yourself, a photograph. The result is better if done outdoors. Locate a white wall (it must be white otherwise it could confuse the camera) and use it as a background. Important to emphasize that the light is diffused, not direct. In the shade on a sunny day or at home very close to the window.

With a tripod take a picture of yourself (you can always ask for help from a friend). Do not use the flash as it may compromise colors.

Then use this site: https://color.adobe.com/it/create/color-wheel/.

This site allows you to extract colors from photographs, provides the values of red, blue green and brightness for each sample point.

At the top left you can upload the picture taken. As soon as the system is loaded it will try to find 5 tones in the image. But they can be changed by clicking and releasing cursors.

When you are convinced that you have created a dark to light gradation, click on “color wheel”. You will then create the color palette that allows you to understand the color of your skin.

You’ve got your color palette. You can save it so you have a reference. You can repeat this method as many times as you want, since in summer or winter things change.

Categories can be: Warm olive, neutral and cold tones. To understand if you are olive (and therefore tending to yellow green) you must experience a lower presence of blue, compared to a cold tone of skin.

Tone analysis

This site divides each color identified in the primary colors red green and blue. In fact, under each color there is an abbreviation RGB which means Red Green Blue in English. Moving the sliders will change the hue. In each skin the red color is very present as it is subcutaneous (the dermis is red). So the pigmentation is green and blue (their combination in percentage).

Looking at the values for each individual color of my skin I can notice that on average between the blue and the green there are about 20 points (the blue differs from the green). the scale of those colors goes from 0 to 255: R 0 B 0 and G 0 are equivalent to black (absence of color).

What I have observed:

There is a difference of more than 20 units between the value of G (green) and the value of B (blue). This means that green is much more present than blue. On the contrary, skin with a cold tone, the blue will be much more present, moving away from the green.

The result of this analysis confirms that the tone of my skin is warm olive.

The method of wrist veins

To confirm my thesis I used another method, that of the color of the wrist veins.

In general if the veins tend to a bluish green, you have a neutral tone. If the veins tend to green you probably have a warm tone and if the veins tend to purple / blue the tone of your skin is cold. In my case they are slightly green, confirming the thesis of the olive tone.

An example of cold tones

In this case I used a face with the skin in the colder tones. Here is the result: the dominated central color shows the difference between B (blue) and G (Green) and about 12 points, thus showing a greater proportional increase in the blue color of the skin.

Conclusion

Here is a summary of what was done: I took a picture of myself and subjected to analysis to analysis using this incredible site ://color.adobe.com/it/create/color-wheel/. Then I gathered information on the various shades: in leather with a warm shade, the difference between blue and green will be large. In colder shades the value of blue will be much closer to green.

I hope you enjoyed this article if you have any questions, write me as well.