Deep Winter makeup: lip, blush and eye colors that hold up

Where a red stops being cool

Every list for this season says blue-based red, and almost none says how to spot one. A red’s lean can be measured. Every color has a place on the color wheel, given in degrees, and a plain screen red, #FF0000, sits at 40 degrees. As blue comes in, the angle falls toward 0 and then wraps round to the 350s. The ladder above keeps depth about level, so that number is the only thing moving.

At this depth the break is clean. Every red on our Deep Winter board sits at 28.5 or under, topped by Winter Red. The first Deep Autumn red above it is Earth Cardinal at 35.9, and it matches Cool Red on lightness almost exactly. So we draw a line at about 30. We set it by comparing our own two palettes, and no standards body sets one, so treat it as a working rule.

Go darker and the rule gets shaky. We’d rather show you that than leave it out.

Ruby and Oxblood are nearly level on hue, at 26.9 and 26.6. So are Winter Burgundy and Burnished Berry, at 10.3 and 11. Those are colors from two seasons that people treat as opposites. In the first pair, the difference is strength: Ruby is clearly more vivid than Oxblood. At the dark end, a lipstick sold as cool and one sold as warm can look much alike on your mouth, and we’d worry less about temperature down there.

One more caution about the number. The angle drifts with depth: add white to that same screen red and #FFC0C0 reads 21.4, with no blue added, and the scale isn’t perfectly even to the eye. So compare reds only at similar depth, which is why there are two ladders, and use the angle to rank colors and never to prove anything about one.

How to tell a cool red from a warm one

In a shop you won’t have a hex code, so here’s the same comparison by eye. These are rules of thumb, and nobody has tested them.

1. Never judge a red alone. On its own, almost any red just looks red. Swipe it on white paper beside an orange-red and a berry you already know.
2. Look at the thin edge of the swipe. Where the color thins out, pink or purple points to blue, and orange or brown points to warm.
3. Take it to daylight. Store lighting can shift a red, and your bathroom will shift it again.
4. Then ask your face. Soul of Color suggests looking for what smooths your skin and brings out your eyes, lips and brows. If a red does that, it’s the right red, whatever its number.

Which lipstick suits a Deep Winter

Our data says deep berry, cool red and wine. Soul of Color’s Deep Winter page lists berry, true red, plum, burgundy and deep fuchsia, and its winter makeup guide adds blackened reds and says matte, satin and lacquer finishes all work. Here is that list in real colors, from the plain answer to the darkest one:

The live test

The lipstick finder finds your mouth with a face landmark model and paints it in one opaque finish, from a choice of nine fixed chips. None was made for this season, and the shades named above aren’t among them, so it can test a direction but not a bottle. Here’s how the nine compare with our board.

Three clear that line: True red, Plum and Berry. Then try the comparison that matters. Flip between True red and Brick, which are close in lightness and only 10 degrees apart on hue, so they straddle our line at nearly the same depth. Watch your skin rather than the lip while you flip. True red sits right at the edge, at 28.6, which may be why people argue about it, and the lipstick finder places it in the middle of the ring.

Black liner next to very dark hair

Soul of Color names black, cool dark brown and deep navy for liner and mascara, and warns that brown and grey can be too light. Its winter guide adds charcoal and forest green. Our own data says black suits this season. What usually gets left out is what a black line does on a face, and that depends on what’s around it.

Start with the band of hair at the top of each panel. Soul of Color puts natural Deep Winter hair at dye levels 1N to 3N. Black is almost exactly as dark as the black hair we draw, so the line adds no new dark to the picture. It repeats one you already have. We think that’s why it can look like a natural edge here and a drawn one on someone with ash brown hair, though that’s our reading and nobody has measured it.

Now read down the skin. At Monk 2, black is a huge step, the biggest contrast on the face, so let the liner be the event and quiet the lip. At Monk 6 the step is smaller, and there’s room for both. At Monk 10 black is only a small step, Deep Navy and Cool Espresso all but vanish, and Charcoal is lighter than the skin. A dark line there works through its shape and its shine. For a liner that shows as color, try Sapphire or Emerald, which are lighter than the skin and far more vivid.

Black or brown? Black first. A brown works if it stays cool, and Cool Espresso is the one to compare against. A warm brown pencil brings in the warmth you’ve kept out everywhere else.

Two sources disagree here, and you should know. Soul of Color calls this season medium to high contrast, with the contrast coming from the whites of the eyes and the teeth. L’Oréal Paris, writing about the contrast makeup trend, gives deep skin with black hair as an example of a low contrast face, and suggests a natural look for it. So a dramatic eye is an option for Deep Winter and not a duty. If your own face reads as even, the low contrast guide applies to you as well.

Can a Deep Winter wear a nude lip?

Soul of Color says to avoid nudes, and that’s one analyst’s opinion. We’d put it differently. A nude is a lip close to your own skin, so whether this season has one depends on the skin.

Read the bottom two rows first. On Monk 9 and 10, Dark Plum and Aubergine sit close to the skin and stay quiet, so the darkest lips on this page are the real nudes there. At Monk 5, Pale Cool Rose does the same job. The trouble is the middle. From Monk 6 to Monk 8 the closest lip is always vivid, and our palette has no color of any kind between Bright Emerald and Pale Cool Rose.

If that’s your skin, borrow. The lipstick finder’s Mauve chip, a soft, medium-deep mauve, isn’t on our board, but it stays cool and quiet. Try it on camera, then look for a real lipstick in that family. We’d call that bending the palette, and it beats wearing a beige nude that pulls warm.

Blush, shadow and the one loud zone

L’Oréal Paris gives high contrast faces a useful limit: bold is fine, and it’s best to keep the focus on your eyes or your lips. It’s a popular theory, and it suits a palette this strong, so pick your zone first and let the rest of the face support it.

Cheeks. Our direction is cool plum or deep rose, and Soul of Color lists deep berry, cool rose and plum. Fair and light skin can use Pale Cool Rose. Medium skin suits Jewel Rose blended thin. Deep skin needs strong color to show at all, so Hot Berry or Jewel Magenta work better than a dusty pink, and a plum can go nearly invisible there. Soul of Color calls bronzer risky for this season and suggests a subtle cool contour instead.

Eyes. Soul of Color likes a smoky eye in cool grey, deep navy, dark plum and charcoal, and adds jewel tones, while warning off warm gold, orange and tan.

Brows and base

With hair this dark, e.l.f.’s brow guide sends you to its darker brown and black family, warns that highly pigmented products can overshoot on fair skin, and suggests a brow shade that shares your skin’s undertone. That makes Cool Espresso the first one to try, with Charcoal for a softer, ashier brow.

Foundation follows your skin and has nothing to do with the season. Soul of Color suggests cool or neutral undertones that match you, and L’Oréal Paris notes that many bottles mark their families C, N or W. On deep skin, also watch for anything that turns ashy. The foundation shade finder is the place to start.

How it differs from Deep Autumn makeup

These two seasons are often confused, and depth won’t separate them: on average our two boards are almost equally deep. Temperature does: this board sits close to neutral, while the Deep Autumn makeup page runs very warm. Here’s the same set of jobs from each board.

The lipstick finder’s True red and Brick chips stand in for the first row. If the warm one is the one that makes your skin look clearer, you may be reading the wrong page, and the Deep Autumn and Deep Winter comparison is the next stop. Fig. 1 is the reason not to expect a clean split on every shade.

Two looks, one loud zone each

Seasons are a convention, so wear the brick red if you love it. Soul of Color itself says draping is the only real way to settle a season. Our scan doesn’t drape: it reads your face and shows your colors beside your photo. The wider palette is on the Deep Winter palette page, and the Deep Winter celebrities page shows who gets typed here and how loose those typings are. The Full Color Report lists makeup shades for your own palette.

Copy the codes

Twenty colors from our board, for comparing against a shade card or a product photo. No lipstick is promised to match a hex, and we haven’t measured any brand against them.

Related guides and tools

• PaletteDeep WinterDark and cool: high-contrast colors with hex codes and a free scan to check them on you.
• GuideDeep Autumn makeupBrick lips, warm blush and dark eyes, with hex codes and a live lipstick test.
• GuideDeep Winter celebritiesWho is commonly typed Deep Winter or Dark Winter, sourced, and how they differ from Deep Autumn.
• GuideDeep autumn vs deep winterBoth dark, one warm and one cool: the neutrals that decide it, tested live.