Two axes, one map
A skin color chart organizes your skin tone on two axes — depth (fair through deep) and undertone (cool, warm, neutral, or olive). Together they place you on a single cell of the chart.
Interactive Skin Color Chart
Skin Color Chart
This interactive skin color chart — also called a skin tone chart — maps 6 depth tiers × 4 undertones, your starting point for foundation, fashion, and color season.
Color Season AI Editorial Team · Last reviewed May 2026
How Do I Identify My Skin Color?
Three quick taps below — depth, undertone, then the olive check — and we'll land you on the right cell of the skin color chart.
Step 1 of 3
Which depth is closest to your bare jawline?
Or browse the skin color chart directly — tap any shade to see its undertone, season, and the colors that flatter it.
CoolNeutralWarmOlive
Fair
Light
Medium
Tan
Brown
Deep
Shades are realistic approximations for visual reference, not clinical measurements. Compare against your bare jawline in natural daylight for the most accurate read.
You're a
Medium Neutral
Fitzpatrick Type III · #D9BB9B
One of the most balanced canvases on the chart — almost any earthy or dusty palette settles beautifully on your skin.
Neutral undertone: A balanced mix of warm and cool — neither pink nor yellow dominates. Wrist veins look blue-green, or you genuinely cannot tell. Both silver and gold work — choose by the colors you wear that day.
Colors that flatter
TealSoft WhiteDusty RoseJadeSlate BlueSoft Coral
Colors to be careful with
Neon YellowElectric FuchsiaMuddy OliveStark Black (head to toe)
Most people who land on Medium Neutral go on to test as Soft Autumn or Soft Summer.
Confirm your Medium Neutral with a full color analysisFree · 12-season AI analysis in about a minute · contrast and hair/eye color picked for you.
The Quick Read
What This Skin Color Chart Tells You
Four things worth knowing — even if you only have 30 seconds before you scroll on.
Six depths × four undertones
Six depth tiers on the skin color chart map cleanly to Fitzpatrick Types I–VI; the four undertone columns decide which colors flatter you — and which to wear carefully.
30 seconds to your cell
The guided picker above lands you on the right cell of the skin color chart in three taps: depth, then wrist veins, then an olive check. No foundation lab required.
Your starting palette
Each cell on the skin color chart maps to one or two likely color seasons in the 12-season system — the entry point to a full personal color palette.
What Is a Skin Color Chart?
A skin color chart — also called a skin tone chart — is a visual reference that organizes human skin along two dimensions: depth — how light or deep your complexion is — and undertone — the subtle hue beneath the surface, cool, warm, neutral, or olive. The interactive grid above is a 24-cell version: six depth rows crossed with four undertone columns.
People reach for a skin color chart for three things, mostly. The first is foundation and concealer matching — every makeup range is organized exactly like this skin color chart, so once you know your cell you know which shades to scan for. The second is choosing flattering clothing and wardrobe colors, which is where seasonal color analysis comes in. The third is sun protection — your depth tier on the skin color chart maps to a Fitzpatrick type, which predicts how your skin reacts to UV.
To read a skin color chart accurately, do it the same way a professional would: clean, bare skin; natural daylight; and look at your jawline, not the back of your hand. Then place your row first (depth) and your column second (undertone). The cell of the skin color chart where the two meet is your skin tone — and that single coordinate is the starting point for almost every color decision you make.
Want the longer read on what each tone and undertone means? See our guide to the six skin tones for the characteristics, sun behaviour, and best colors of each one.
Placing your row is the half people get wrong most often, because depth is the thing a mirror flatters and a phone camera exaggerates. If you would rather have it measured than judged, the full face analysis reads depth straight off a selfie — deliberately depth only, since white balance moves an undertone further than skin ever does.
The Method
How to Determine Your Place on the Skin Color Chart — the 3-Step Method
The same three checks our guided picker runs, written out so you can do them anywhere — bathroom mirror, daylight by a window, no apps required. Each step takes about ten seconds.
Step One · Depth
Compare your bare jawline to the six depth tiers
Stand near a window in natural daylight with no makeup on. Hold the inside of your jawline up to the six depth chips of the skin color chart — fair, light, medium, tan, brown, or deep. The closest match is your row. Re-check after a few weeks; sun and seasons can shift your depth, but rarely more than one tier in either direction.
What to look for
The jawline is the most reliable area — neither sun-exposed (like the back of the hand) nor protected (like the inner upper arm). It is your true baseline.
Step Two · Undertone
Use the wrist-vein test to read your undertone column
Turn your inner wrist toward natural light. Mostly green-looking veins point to a warm undertone — your skin pulls golden. Mostly blue or purple points to cool — your skin pulls rosy. A genuine mix or "I cannot tell" almost always means neutral. The wrist-vein test is the fastest read-out for the undertone column on a skin color chart because daylight removes the bulb-light bias that throws off most other DIY methods.
What to look for
Daylight is non-negotiable. Fluorescent and warm bulbs both bias the result — step to a window, not a mirror in a bathroom with cool LEDs.
Step Three · Olive Check
Confirm whether you sit in the olive column
Olive is its own undertone column on the skin color chart, not a depth — it is a subtle green or grey-green cast that can sit over any depth from fair to deep. The cast often shows up best in photos taken under fluorescent light, or against a pure white fabric. If you tend to look slightly green or grey in pictures while everyone else looks pink or golden, the olive column is yours.
What to look for
Olive skin reads green precisely because of how its melanin sits in the warm range; it suits muted, slightly cool greens (sage, jade) better than icy or pure-cool tones.
Run all three checks once and the cell of the skin color chart that is yours becomes obvious. If two checks disagree (very common with neutral skin), trust the depth read first and let the season analysis fine-tune the undertone.
Skin Tone vs. Undertone: What the Skin Color Chart Shows
Every skin color chart is built on two separate dimensions, and confusing them is the number-one reason people pick the wrong foundation or the wrong wardrobe colors.
The vertical axis
Skin tone (depth)
This is the surface lightness of your skin — fair, light, medium, tan, brown, or deep. It is the part most people mean when they say “skin tone,” and it does shift with sun exposure and the seasons. On the skin color chart above, depth runs top to bottom.
The horizontal axis
Undertone (hue)
This is the subtle hue beneath the surface — cool (pink/blue), warm (yellow/golden), neutral (a balance of both), or olive (a green-grey cast). Undertone does not change with a tan. On the skin tone chart, undertone runs left to right across the four columns.
A complete skin tone chart pairs the two: a “Medium · Warm” and a “Medium · Cool” sit on the same row but call for completely different makeup and clothing colors. When you read it, always note both the row and the column you land on — depth alone is not enough.
The Fitzpatrick Scale: A 6-Type Skin Tone Chart
The Fitzpatrick scale is the classic six-point skin color chart dermatologists use to describe how skin reacts to UV light. It maps to the six depth rows above — a useful shorthand whether you are choosing sunscreen or building a wardrobe.
Type I
Fair
Always burns, never tans — very sensitive to UV.
Type II
Light
Burns easily, tans minimally.
Type III
Medium
Burns moderately, tans gradually to light brown.
Type IV
Tan
Burns rarely, tans easily to a moderate brown.
Type V
Brown
Very rarely burns, tans deeply and easily.
Type VI
Deep
Almost never burns, deeply pigmented.
Modern shade-matching systems go far beyond six points — measured skin-data charts (in effect, very fine-grained skin color charts) now run to well over a hundred shades. But for everyday use, the Fitzpatrick skin tone chart plus your undertone is enough to point you at the right foundation family and the right color season.
Beyond Fitzpatrick: Modern Skin Tone Charts
The Fitzpatrick scale is the skin tone chart most people have seen, but it is not the only one — and it has a known limitation: it lumps the entire range of deep skin into one type. Newer skin color charts fix that with more shades. Here is how the main systems compare.
Fitzpatrick scale
19756 types (I–VI)
Dermatology — predicts how skin burns and tans under UV. The classic skin tone reference and still the foundation of most six-row skin color charts in everyday use, including for sun protection and rough shade range.
von Luschan scale
189736 tiles
A historical pigmentation chart matched against physical glass tiles. Largely retired now — subjective and tied to outdated anthropology — but the direct ancestor of every modern skin color chart and skin tone chart in use today.
Monk Skin Tone Scale
202210 shades
Built for inclusivity in machine learning and product design. More even coverage of deep and medium tones on the skin color chart than Fitzpatrick, which compresses the deepest skins into a single type.
Pantone SkinTone Guide
industry standard110+ measured shades
A makeup- and print-industry reference built from real measured skin data — the kind of fine-grained skin color chart that foundation brands use to develop shade ranges.
Which one should you use? For developing a product line or training a model, more shades are always better — that is why the Monk and Pantone systems exist. But for everyday personal decisions — buying foundation, picking wardrobe colors, choosing sunscreen — the two-axis framework of this skin color chart (depth plus undertone) is enough. Add your depth tier, add your undertone, and you have what every other system would tell you, without the lab gear.
What's Next
The Future of the Skin Color Chart: What's Changing in 2026
Skin color charts have moved further in the last five years than in the previous fifty. The shift from a 6-type clinical scale (1975) to AI-driven, hundred-shade systems (2026) is reshaping how foundation, sunscreen, and beauty AI think about your skin tone.
The Clinical Era
Fitzpatrick Scale
6 phototypes
Built by a Harvard dermatologist to predict UV burn risk. Still the everyday standard for sunscreen and laser treatment — and still the backbone of most six-row skin color charts, including this one.
The Equity Correction
Monk Skin Tone Scale
10 shades
Created by Google Research with sociologist Ellis Monk to fix the well-known limitation of older skin color charts that compress the entire range of deep skin into a single category. Now used by Google Image Search, Pixel cameras, and skin-AI fairness benchmarks.
The Live AI Era
On-device Tone Matching
100+ shades
Skin color charts are leaving the printed page. Beauty apps, smart mirrors, and on-device AI cameras read your skin live — depth, undertone, even seasonal shift — and match against shade ranges in the hundreds. The chart isn't disappearing; it's becoming dynamic.
For everyday personal use, the depth + undertone framework on this skin color chart still gets you 80% of the way there — your jawline match plus your wrist-vein read are decisions no AI camera can make for you. Expect the next round of beauty apps and shade-matching tools to read your skin in real time, with far more shades to choose from than any printed skin tone chart ever offered.
How to Find Your Undertone (4 Quick Tests)
Your depth on the skin color chart is easy to eyeball. Undertone takes a few seconds of checking. Run two or three of these tests — if they agree, you have your column on the skin color chart.
1
The wrist-vein test
In natural daylight, look at the veins on your inner wrist. Green-looking veins point to a warm undertone, blue or purple to a cool undertone, and a blue-green mix (or genuine uncertainty) to neutral. An olive undertone often reads green here too — note any grey-green cast to your skin itself.
2
Gold vs. silver
Hold a gold piece of jewelry against your jaw, then a silver one. If gold makes your skin look lit-up and silver looks harsh, you lean warm. If silver looks crisp and gold looks sallow, you lean cool. If both look fine, you are likely neutral.
3
White vs. cream
Drape a pure-white fabric near your face, then a warm-cream one. Pure white that makes your skin glow signals a cool undertone; cream that flatters signals warm. Olive skin often does best with off-white rather than either extreme.
4
How you react to sun
Skin that tans easily and rarely burns usually carries a warm undertone; skin that burns first and tans slowly usually carries a cool one. This is a supporting clue, not a verdict — combine it with the tests above before you place yourself on the skin color chart.
If the tests give mixed answers, you are probably neutral on the skin color chart — and that is genuinely common. Neutral undertones get the widest run of any skin tone chart, but still look best when the rest of the palette stays balanced rather than aggressively warm or cool.
Prefer to do this as a guided quiz? Our free color analysis quiz walks you through all four checks — veins, metals, sun reaction, and natural hair color — and tells you your undertone in under three minutes.
Take the Free QuizUsing the Skin Color Chart to Match Foundation
The same two axes that organize this skin tone chart organize every foundation range: depth picks the shade number, undertone picks the family (warm / cool / neutral). Find your cell below for the shade language to look for.
| Depth | Warm undertone | Cool undertone | Neutral undertone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | Ivory, warm porcelain, light beige | Porcelain, alabaster, fair rose | Fair neutral, "natural" light |
| Light | Light golden, warm sand, nude | Light rose-beige, cool ivory | Light natural, vanilla |
| Medium | Honey, golden beige, warm tan | Rose-beige, sand-rose, cool buff | Natural medium, soft sand |
| Tan | Caramel, golden tan, warm amber | Rose-tan, cool caramel, mocha-rose | Warm-neutral tan, "true" tan |
| Brown | Warm chestnut, golden brown, praline | Cool chestnut, rose-brown, cocoa | Neutral brown, hazelnut |
| Deep | Warm espresso, golden ebony, mahogany | Cool espresso, rich cocoa, blue-black | Neutral deep, true ebony |
Three habits ruin more foundation matches than anything else. First, testing shade on the back of your hand — hands tan warmer and darker than faces; always swatch along your jawline. Second, judging the swatch under store lighting, which is usually too yellow or too blue — step outside, or to a window, before you decide. Third, committing before the foundation has settled: most shades oxidize a little within 15–30 minutes, so wait that long before you call it a match.
And remember a screen caveat: the swatches on this page (or any online skin tone chart) shift with your monitor and room light. Use the skin color chart to identify your depth and undertone — then match the physical product to your skin, not to the pixels.
Two Tools, Two Jobs
Skin Color Chart vs. Foundation Shade Range — Where They Match and Where They Don't
A skin color chart and a foundation shade range share the same DNA — depth on one axis, undertone on the other — but they are built for different decisions. Knowing which one to reach for saves a lot of returned bottles.
Skin Color Chart
Foundation Shade Range
Granularity
Six depth tiers × four undertones = 24 cells. Coarse, but enough for any color decision a non-pro needs.
Modern ranges run 30–50 shades; Pantone SkinTone covers 138 measured tones. Granular enough for product matching.
Undertone vocabulary
Cool / Warm / Neutral / Olive — four columns, plain language, easy to self-test (veins, gold-vs-silver).
Often three families (cool / neutral / warm) plus brand-specific names ("rose-beige", "honey golden"). Olive is sometimes folded into neutral.
What it predicts
Wardrobe colors, color season, sun behavior. Tells you which family of products and palettes will flatter you.
A single product match. Tells you which exact bottle to buy, in which exact shade — but only for that one brand and formula.
How fast it dates
Stable. Fitzpatrick is from 1975 and still useful; the depth + undertone framework hasn’t fundamentally changed.
Refreshed every season. Brands re-shade, oxidize differently, discontinue lines — your "perfect match" can disappear in a year.
The simplest workflow: use the skin color chart on this page to lock in your depth and undertone family. Then take that two-coordinate read into any foundation aisle (or any retailer's shade-finder tool) and you can scan the right shade language in seconds — "light-medium warm", "medium neutral", "deep cool". The chart is the strategy; the shade range is the tactic.
Know your tone and undertone? Find your blush.
The same depth-and-undertone read decides which blush flatters you. Take the free 5-question quiz to get your shade — peach, coral, dusty rose, terracotta and more.
¿Prefieres leerlo en español? Consulta la guía de tonos de piel con la escala de fototipos y los nombres de cada tono en España y Latinoamérica.
The Equity Gap
Deep Skin Tones — and Why Most Skin Color Charts Compress Them
The original Fitzpatrick scale (1975) lumps the entire range of deep skin into a single category — Type VI — even though deep skin spans the widest undertone range on any skin color chart. The Monk Skin Tone Scale (2022) was built specifically to fix that compression by splitting it into multiple shades. Until product ranges fully catch up, a few extra checks pay off if your skin sits in the Brown or Deep rows of the skin color chart above (roughly Fitzpatrick V–VI).
Watch for SPF flashback
Mineral sunscreens (zinc oxide, titanium dioxide) can leave a grey-white cast on deeper skin — sometimes called "flashback" in photos. Look for tinted mineral SPF, sheer chemical formulas, or "no white cast" labelling, and rub it in fully before makeup.
Let foundation oxidize before you judge it
Deep foundation shades shift more after application — usually toward orange or grey within 15–30 minutes as they react with skin and air. Swatch on your jaw, wait, then decide. The shade that looks right immediately may not be the one you want at hour three.
Match to the area you actually show
Face, neck, and chest can sit a shade or two apart on deeper skin. Blend foundation toward your neck and décolletage, not just your face, so there is no line where the makeup stops.
Undertone still matters — a lot
Deep skin is not automatically "neutral." Cool-deep skin can carry a blue-black or red-cocoa cast; warm-deep skin a golden-bronze or olive one. That is why the Brown and Deep rows of the skin color chart above each split into all four undertone columns — your column changes which jewel tones, browns, and metals flatter you.
On the wardrobe side, deep skin tones tend to look striking in saturated, clear colors — true reds, cobalt, emerald, magenta, crisp white — when the undertone matches, which is why deep skin so often lands in the Winter or deep Autumn families. Tap your cell on the skin color chart above to see the seasons it usually maps to, then confirm with the free color analysis.
From Skin Color Chart to Color Season
Here is what a skin color chart can’t do on its own — and where seasonal color analysis picks up. Your depth and undertone on the skin color chart narrow you to a corner of the 12-season system; contrast level and the colors of your hair and eyes pick the exact season inside it. Use this skin tone chart matrix as a map, then confirm with the analysis.
Cool undertone
Pink or bluish skin → the cool half of the wheel: Summers (soft, light) and Winters (deep, bright).
Warm undertone
Yellow or golden skin → the warm half: Springs (clear, light) and Autumns (rich, muted).
Neutral undertone
A balanced base → usually the "soft" or "true" seasons, where neither warmth nor coolness dominates.
Olive undertone
A green-grey cast → most often the muted families: Soft Autumn, True Autumn, and the deeper Autumns/Winters.
Deep dive: Olive Skin Tone guide →Not sure which season you landed on?
The skin color chart gets you to the right corner. A free 12-season analysis names the exact season — and your full palette.
Find Your Color SeasonFree · results in about a minute
Why Your Read Keeps Changing
Reading the Skin Color Chart Across Lighting Conditions
The same skin tone reads differently under different bulbs. Here is what each common lighting environment does to your skin color chart read — and how to compensate without having to repeat the whole test.
Natural daylight
The reference standard
Indirect daylight from a north-facing window is the only condition where a skin color chart reads true. Veins look their actual color, jewelry tests resolve cleanly, and depth comparisons are reliable. If you can only check yourself once, do it here.
Cool fluorescent
Pulls everything cooler
Office and bathroom fluorescents push your read one full undertone column to the cool side of the skin color chart. Warm undertones look neutral; neutral looks cool; cool looks icy. This is the single most common cause of skin color chart misreads — and of buying a foundation that turns chalky outside the store.
Warm incandescent / LED
Pulls everything warmer
Bedside lamps, restaurant lighting, and "warm white" LEDs do the opposite — they push your skin tone chart read one column toward warm. Cool undertones look neutral; warm undertones look almost orange. Re-checking under daylight resets the read every time.
Camera flash / mixed
Flattens depth, distorts undertone
Direct flash washes out depth (you read one tier lighter than you are) and randomly biases undertone depending on the flash color temperature. Selfies for skin color chart purposes should always be lit by a window, not a camera flash.
Practical rule of thumb: if you must read the skin color chart under non-daylight, read your depth tier as usual but mentally shift your undertone column one step back toward the bias — one column warmer under fluorescent, one cooler under warm bulbs. Better still, take a photo by the window and read the skin color chart against the photo.
Common Mistakes When Reading a Skin Color Chart
Most wrong reads come from the same handful of slip-ups. Avoid these and your skin color chart result will hold up across lighting, seasons, and product ranges — a skin tone chart is only as accurate as the conditions you read it under.
Reading your skin tone off the back of your hand
Hands tan warmer and darker than faces. Always compare against your bare jawline or the inside of your upper arm in daylight.
Checking under store or bathroom lighting
Warm bulbs push everything golden; cool bulbs push everything blue. The chart only works under neutral daylight — step to a window.
Mistaking a fresh tan for your real undertone
A tan changes your depth on the skin tone chart, not your undertone. Re-check your undertone (veins, gold vs. silver) when your skin is at its baseline.
Assuming "olive" just means "dark"
Olive is an undertone — a green-grey cast — not a depth. Fair skin can be olive, and so can deep skin. It is a column on the skin color chart, not a row.
Treating the skin color chart as your final color verdict
Depth and undertone get you to a family of seasons. Contrast level and your hair and eye color decide the exact one — that needs a full color analysis.
Quick Reference
Skin Color Chart Glossary — Six Terms Worth Knowing
The vocabulary around the skin color chart can get tangled. Here are the six terms that come up most when reading, comparing, or shopping with a skin tone chart — defined once, in plain language.
- Skin color charta.k.a. skin tone chart
- A two-axis visual reference that maps skin by depth (fair → deep) and undertone (cool, warm, neutral, olive). The skin color chart and the skin tone chart are the same tool — different name, same axes.
- Skin color chart cellone row × one column
- A single intersection of one depth row and one undertone column. The interactive skin color chart on this page has 6 × 4 = 24 cells; your skin sits in one of them.
- Depth tierrows of the skin color chart
- A row of the skin color chart — six in total, mapping to Fitzpatrick Types I–VI. Your depth tier shifts with sun exposure but rarely jumps more than one row.
- Undertone columncolumns of the skin color chart
- A column of the skin color chart — four in total: cool, warm, neutral, and olive. Your undertone column is genetic and stays the same regardless of season or tan.
- Fitzpatrick rowclinical depth label
- The clinical name for a depth tier on the skin color chart. Type I = fair, Type VI = deep. Predicts how your skin reacts to UV more than which colors flatter you.
- Reading the chartdepth, then undertone
- Step 1 of using the skin color chart is depth (which row). Step 2 is undertone (which column). Together they give you a single skin color chart cell — and a starting palette.
Skin Color Chart FAQ
Look at your bare jawline in natural daylight, with no makeup on. First place your depth — fair, light, medium, tan, brown, or deep — by comparing against the rows of the skin color chart. Then run an undertone test or two (wrist veins, gold vs. silver, white vs. cream) to find your column on the skin tone chart: cool, warm, neutral, or olive. The cell where your row and column meet is your skin tone.
Most skin tone charts use six depth groups: fair, light, medium, tan, brown, and deep — the same six that map to the Fitzpatrick scale (Types I–VI). Crossed with the four undertones (cool, warm, neutral, olive), that gives the 24-cell chart on this page. Some makeup ranges add finer steps in between, but six depths is the standard reference.
Skin tone is the surface depth of your skin — how light or deep it is — and it can shift with sun exposure. Undertone is the subtle hue underneath — cool (pink/blue), warm (yellow/golden), neutral, or olive — and it does not change with a tan. A full skin color chart shows both: depth on one axis, undertone on the other.
Three quick checks: (1) wrist veins — green means warm, blue/purple means cool, in-between means neutral; (2) jewelry — if gold flatters you more than silver you lean warm, and vice versa; (3) fabrics — if pure white makes you glow you are cool, if warm cream does you are warm. If the tests disagree, you are most likely neutral. Olive skin usually reads green-ish but suits muted, slightly cool greens.
The Fitzpatrick scale is a six-point skin tone chart originally developed to predict how skin reacts to UV light, from Type I (always burns, never tans) to Type VI (deeply pigmented, almost never burns). It describes depth, not undertone — so it tells you about sun sensitivity and rough shade range, but you still need your undertone to pick foundation or wardrobe colors.
Olive is an undertone, not a depth — a green or grey-green cast that can sit over a fair, medium, or deep complexion. On the skin tone chart you would pick your depth row as usual, then the olive column. Olive skin most often suits muted, earthy colors and the "soft" seasons (Soft Autumn, Soft Summer) or the deeper Autumns and Winters.
Your depth does — sun exposure, the seasons, and aging can lighten or darken it, so where you sit on the skin tone chart can move. Your undertone is genetic and stays put. That is why undertone, not depth, is the more reliable foundation to build your color palette around when reading the skin color chart.
Foundation ranges are organized exactly like a skin color chart: a shade number for depth, a family (warm / cool / neutral) for undertone. Once you know your cell, you know which shade language to scan for — "honey" and "golden beige" if you are medium-warm, "rose-beige" if you are medium-cool. Always swatch on your jawline in daylight, since screens and store lights distort color.
Go beyond the skin color chart
Upload a selfie and let our AI read your depth, undertone, and contrast — your exact 12-season palette in about a minute.