Neutral undertone: what it means and how to be sure

What is a neutral undertone?

Skin whose lean is too slight to call either way. M·A·C defines it as “an equal balance” of warm and cool, and Dior’s Neutral family is for “balanced pink and yellow tones”. In color terms, it means sitting close to the middle of the narrow hue range where skin lives. It doesn’t mean beige, or medium, or colorless. It occurs at every depth:

You may have searched for “neutral skin tone”. It usually means the same thing, even if tone and undertone are strictly different words.

Is a neutral undertone rare?

Nobody knows, and be wary of anyone quoting a percentage. We found no prevalence figure with data behind it, and there’s a good reason none would mean much. Undertone has no agreed cutoff. Whether neutral is rare or common depends entirely on how wide you draw the middle band. Draw it narrow and almost nobody qualifies. Draw it wide and half the population does. Our own undertone test calls a result neutral when the evidence nets out inside a band around zero, and that band is a choice we made.

A more useful question is which of three situations you’re in, because all three look like neutral from a distance. That’s what the three scales at the top show.

A tie isn’t a result

Here’s where many people go wrong. Standard advice turns confusion into a diagnosis. Skincare.com says that if you “can’t really suss out” your vein color, or see a mix, “you may have neutral undertones”. The result: anyone with a hard-to-read test gets labeled neutral. Brilliant Earth’s jewelry guide has it right, in a line we wish were on every quiz: a tie, it says, “doesn’t necessarily indicate neutral undertones”.

One weak test that doesn’t point anywhere is absence of evidence. Real neutrality is evidence of balance. You need strong tests, run several times, that still come out even. Very fair and very deep skin are at most risk of a false neutral, because both carry so little color that tests come back mushy.

Confirm or reject: the four-round test

This is how to separate the three scales. It’s our method, and it isn’t validated. Bare face, indirect daylight, and honest notes.

1. Round one, gentle pairs. Hold each under your chin, and pick the one that leaves your skin clearer: salmon or dusty rose, then soft camel or taupe grey.
2. Round two, stress the extremes. This is the round standard tests skip. Try something strongly warm, like mustard, then strongly cool, like fuchsia. Both may look a bit much. The question is whether one is clearly worse.
3. Round three, the whites. Pure white against cream, close to the jaw.
4. Round four, another day. Repeat rounds one and two in similar light. Then compare your notes.

The undertone test shows warm and cool pairs like round one beside your photo, and tells you if it was a close call.

Which foundation should a neutral buy?

Neutral is often sold as the easy option, and it gets you close faster. But close can be a trap too, because a shade can look acceptable without looking right. Try this:

1. Find your depth first. A neutral undertone in the wrong depth still looks wrong, and it looks wrong sooner than a slightly off lean does. The foundation shade finder gives you a family to begin with.
2. Look for N in the shade code, at brands that use letters. M·A·C has an N line, and says neutral is “an equal balance of both”. Its page doesn’t define NC or NW, and elsewhere it labels warm and cool in reverse of most brands, so test before you trust.
3. Swatch three stripes along your jaw in daylight: the neutral, and one step warmer and cooler at the same depth. If the neutral disappears best, great. If one neighbor beats it, you’ve just learned your lean.
4. Expect some shifting between products. As M·A·C puts it, “your shade may vary across foundations due to formula variations.” A neutral in one line can read slightly warm in another.

Which colors and metals suit a neutral undertone?

Being neutral opens more doors, but temperature stops deciding much, so other things have to do the choosing. Depth and strength matter more for you than for most. Do you look better in soft or clear? Light or deep? That’s what will separate your good colors from your bad ones, and it’s why testing colors on your own face pays off.

There’s also a family of colors that barely take sides. We searched our twelve palettes for colors that measure close to zero on our warmth axis while still having real color, as opposed to being grey. Mauves and forest greens dominate, since they sit off to the side of the warm to cool line:

If you’re looking for a season to explore, try the palettes nearest the middle on temperature. By average warmth across 40 colors, ours are Bright Winter and Deep Winter, both almost perfectly balanced. These numbers describe the palettes we built, not people, and neutral skin doesn’t mean any one season.

Whites are easy: try soft white first and move toward either bright or cream. Metals are the fun part. Mixing is on the table, so try gold and silver together, or rose gold, which is itself a mix. If you want a test, the gold or silver test will often come back close for you, and that’s a fair result here. For lips, rose and antique rose are good places to compare, and which you prefer tells you whether there’s a lean after all.

For the wider vocabulary, read what undertone means. For a comparison of the tests, see how to find your undertone.

Related guides and tools

• ToolFoundation shade finderA calibrated reading of depth and undertone, translated into how shade names work.
• ToolGold or silver testCompare gold and silver on your own skin and read what it says about your undertone.
• GuideUndertone meaningWhat undertone is, how it differs from skin tone, and the four types with examples.
• GuideWarm undertonesThe signs at every skin depth, yellow against peach, and the colors and metals that work.