MAKEUP COLORS THAT WORK

November 14, 2007

What’s the single hardest thing about choosing makeup colors that you will love in a week, and use to the end? Without a doubt, it’s finding the colors that will work on you and in your life. You have very limited time, so you really don’t want hype, trends, recommendations you know are wrong for you, or sales pressure. Some straight- talking advice to help navigate the overwhelming selection out there would be appreciated.

Understand your own coloring

You need to have a sense of whether you’re pink/blue or yellow/gold and what the intensity of your coloring is. Some women are surprisingly difficult to categorize. You go through all the guidelines and you still can’t figure them out.

Have a look at Carole Jackson’s great book, Color Me Beautiful. The 4 categories are grouped according to the 4 seasons. I believe it is still the best reference for how to learn your own colors. Ms. Jackson has worked with thousands of women and offers many great tips on how to determine the color of your skin’s undertone.

Color Me Beautiful

Makeup color has got to be right for you because you’re painting in right on your face. Start by trying to distinguish the warm colors from the cool ones. By holding two products side-by-side, or trying both on your arm, you can more easily tell which has more yellow and which is more pink, warm and cool if you like.

As great as the book is, Color Me Beautiful was published in 1981 and Color Me Beautiful MakeUp Book was published in 1987. In both books, I think the makeup is dated now. The photography in the makeup book is not nearly as nice as in the original, and the color swatches are very small and hard to see. The models are wearing too much eyeliner and the lip color seems too strong, very 1980s. Actually, it’s the original book that will provide your best guidance for choosing makeup colors.

Modern makeup for real women

Another reason that the makeup seems old-fashioned to me is that the strength of the eye, lip, and cheek colors are the same on each woman. There are no faces with stronger eyes and a light mouth, or vice versa. I think variation in the strength of the makeup on each feature looks more imaginative and allows you to play up a good feature more.

In the 1980s, I would guess that little use was made of monochromatic palettes (meaning the whole face is done in varying depths of the same color). I think that can be a beautiful, harmonious look that is classy, easy to apply, and easy to shop for. It also looks more modern than brown eyes/pink mouth.

Ms. Jackson says that the color palettes are timeless and, for clothing, I agree. However, you’ll see blue and green on the faces, and to my eyes, the green eyeshadow is still all you notice, not the eyes themselves. That makeup might have been considered stylish 25 years ago, but when I look at it now, I wouldn’t choose the blue eyeshadow or strong lip and cheek color. I would guess that Ms. Jackson herself would apply the makeup differently today.

Not rules, just suggestions – well, OK, rules

Now, I’m not really about rules. I dislike doctrine as much as anyone and more than most. Makeup artists love to say that rules should be discarded. That’s fine, they have the skill to make any color look good on any woman. To help the rest of us make some good choices, I think it’s time a few rules came back.

Freedom of expression is a great thing, but there is something to be said for being taken seriously. It’s hard to be perceived as empowered and gaudy, as refined and cheap, at the same time.

So, here are some guidelines. You’re at the store. You have your color sheets. Someone is telling you those colors are for clothes and that the categories are too limited. Ignore them. They tell you the book is too old to be applied these days. Ignore that too. The rules for the clothing colors absolutely do still apply and can be incredibly useful for guiding you to good makeup choices.

Just look at the makeup.

1. If it’s green, purple, or blue, or any combination thereof, don’t put it on your eyes if you’re over 30, or anywhere else on your face. It’s distracting because you keep trying to look away and can’t. The eye continues to come back to it. On women like you and me, it just looks odd.
Stay away from burgundy, lavender, or rose unless you really know what you’re doing or wish to look like you’ve recently received some bad news.
Don’t use anything on your eyes that anyone could perceive as orange or yellow or pink. Pale renditions of these colors are fine, as long as the color itself becomes imperceptible when applied. Matte peach-pink on eyelids, with a taupe or golden-brown contour, can be gorgeous but the peach-pink should blend into your skin tones so well that no one would say you were wearing pink eyeshadow.

2. Focus on the warm or cool colors, as appropriate to you. Pretend you can’t see the other colors. You’ll get better at this. It is confusing because the makeup counters often display all the colors with no organized plan so you have to consider each color, separate from its neighbors.

You’ll probably have to try many of the colors on your arm because you can’t tell from the display (or the usually unsuitable mall lighting) what the color will look like on you. Occasionally, you’ll see a makeup artist apply a warm color to an otherwise cool face to create strong contrast and so bring out eyes or mouth. Speaking for myself, that idea is doomed to produce a conspicuous mistake.

3. Think about color intensity next. Look at the spectrum of your colors and start getting a feeling for which are more intense or strong. If you have medium intensity hair/eyes/skin, go for the medium vibrancy color. This is more important in makeup than in clothing. If your coloring is soft, you can often wear bright clothing in your season but the same color on your face could be overpowering unless the application is extremely sheer or very controlled.

Women with darker pigmentation will wear relatively darker colors, but they’ll look more neutral on a darker skin tone. Too much is still too much when it gets too dark or too bright. Just keep in mind your own pigment intensity/strength/boldness/depth.

There, we’ve cancelled 75% of what’s out there.

5. Color Me Beautiful can be a fantastic guide for buying eyeshadow. The work is done for you. Your eyeshadow colors correspond pretty well to the colors in the far left column of the color swatch pages (with the exception of True Blue on the Winter page).

For the palettes in this article, any of the browns and beiges will make great eyeshadow colors for you. If you’re partial to blue eyelids, here are your blue shades as well!

You still need to coordinate the intensity of your coloring with the intensity of the eyeshadow; a Summer with very light eyes, skin, and hair will need much softer cool browns and grays than a Summer with stronger eye and hair color. The same goes for all the seasons.

Forget about needing 4 eyeshadow colors to design a look; unless you’re a master blender and have some great brushes, you’ll look like you tried too hard and missed. That’s makeup artist territory, and besides who has time? Pick the lightest colors to go just under your eyebrow, and one of the deeper colors for the lid and crease – intensity of color about the same as intensity of your coloring or a little darker. That same deeper color can be brushed under your lower lid alone, or over a line of liner in a similar color if you want a stronger look. I like the look of 1 eyeshadow color instead of a lashline, lid, crease, and brow color. I think it looks more sophisticated.

6. Any of the shades that you can imagine as lip colors on the pages from that book will probably look good on you. I’m not a fan of dark or very bright lips, but when the color is bang on, even the very bright colors will blend easily with your coloring.

7. Blush color and lipstick colors come from the same color family (warm/cool), though you may want stronger or lighter shades on lips or cheeks. Actually, having one pale and the other strong can be a great look, often better than both at the same level of brightness. Once again, just look in Color Me Beautiful for your best shades.

If you have a fit of passion one day and apply a sparkly green eyeliner, OK, fine. It’s great practice in the important skill of not taking yourself too seriously. Just don’t use it the day you have a job interview.

[Edit April 22/09: A week ago, I finally became a color analyst myself. While I think Ms. Jackson's book is deserving of the popularity it achieved in the 1980's, the color analysis world has gotten much bigger for me. It now encompasses several different systems, each with its particular strengths. Though the information in this article is not wrong, my opinions on a few issues are broader today. Since this blog is in part a record of my journey, I leave the article in the original form for nostalgic reasons.]

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Color Analysis, Makeup