Cool Vs. Warm Skin Tone & Coloring: Penelope Cruz and Amanda Seyfried

Skin color ranges from pale to dark. Fair skin that burns easily or has freckles is usually considered a light skin tone. Tan skin is usually considered an olive skin tone. 

Skin tones can have cool or warm undertones. Orange, yellow, gold and green are considered warm undertones. Red, pink and blue are considered cool undertones. You can determine which undertones you have by looking at the veins on your wrist. Blue veins indicate cool undertones, and green veins indicate warm undertones. Additionally, people with warm undertones look better in gold jewelry while silver jewelry looks better on people with cool undertones.

Colors that are next to each other on a color wheel are called analogous and seem to match nicely. Colors that are opposite each other on a color wheel are called complementary. Warm tones are analogous to other warm tones and cool tones are analogous to other cool tones.

Analogous colors on your hair, lips and clothing are what make you look your best. When selecting an eye shadow color, you can choose analogous colors to look more subtle or complementary shades to highlight your eye color. 

Penelope Cruz is a Spanish celebrity who has a warm olive complexion skin tone with goldenundertones. She looks best with a warm brunette hair color and brown eyes because these colors are similar to her warm skin tone. Her signature smoky eyeliner looks great against a brown or tan eye shadow base, and her best choice for lip color is coral or orange red. 

When it comes to fashion, Penelope Cruz looks best in quite bright warm and cool colors. The yellow Oscar de la Renta dress that she wore to the 2005 Academy awards looked amazing and radiant against her tan complexion. In 2010 she rocked the Oscar red carpet again in a warm color, this time a maroon Donna Karan gown. 

Penelope Cruz does not look as great in smoky cool colored outfits. While promoting Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in 2011 at Cannes, Penelope looked washed out in a periwinkle Marchesa dress. It was just a few shades too light for her warm skin tone. She also looked washed out when she wore a cool toned Armani Prive gown to the 2012 Oscars. 

While Penelope Cruz has a typically winter appearance for high contrast between her skin and hair and for her face features, she earns huge compliments for electric colors of outfits and for clear black and whites clothes. Her olive skin goes healthier and warmer with electrics blues, greens and reds. Like many of winter type persons Penelope is happy looking about wearing black and whites for every occasion, even without any make-up: she has enough contrast in appearance to take this style liberty.

Amanda Seyfried has a cool toned complexion as her skin is light with pink undertones. Her hair is ashy blonde and her eyes are a cool blue/green/grey combination. She looks best with smoky or ashy toned blonde hair and pale pink or neutral lip colors. Amanda Seyfried is a typical Summer appearance person with light skin tone and really noticeable pink undertone.

Amanda looked fabulous and ethereal in a cool purple dress by Lanvin at the premiere of her film Red Riding Hood in March 2011. Contrast that sleek look with the orange-red Valentino dress she wore back at the 2009 Oscars. The orange-red looks clownish and unsophisticated on her because it is just too warm for her cool coloring. Amanda’s stylist should stick with cool pastels, ashy 's' smoky colors and jewel tones as those colors look best on her. Also, electric tones won't be the best companions to fit light skin tone with pink undertone.

If your complexion is similar to that of Penelope Cruz, try a warm hair color such as golden blonde or brown. Coral or red looks great on lips. These shades work because they are all warm tones. Use gold or brown eye shadow to look natural, or purple shadow to help brown eyes stand out. For clothing and accessories, wear black and whites, electrics, bright tones, gold and red. Avoid smoky toned pastels as they will wash you out.

If you have light skin and pink undertones like Amanda Seyfried, you will look best with a cool blonde or ashy brunette hair color. For lips, nudes or cool-toned pinks will look much better than oranges or corals. Neutral beige and taupe shadows will look more natural on eyelids while gold or tan shadows will make your cool eyes pop. Choose jewel toned and smoky or ashy pastel colored clothing. Stay away from anything too contrasted, electric or earthy as this will make you look unnatural.

Skin tone charts for grey haired.

Hello everybody, I've been away for years I think! Now I'm ready to discuss such an important question as different skin tones in many sorts again!

Oh my God, I'm going grey! Is it awfully inglorious? Or is it trendy? Could grey hair be attractive and stylish? How to bring yourself to gracefully natural grey hair? How to match your skin tone to different shadows of grey hair? How to choose the right tone of clothes and accessories to your skin and grey hair? There are so many questions, so let's look at this matter in details with visual skin tone charts.  

There is no secret grey hairs appear even in youth, so grey hair can't be only the mature age sign in fact of genetic inheritance, global environmental influences and other matters. According to the recent famous fashion magazine Glamour more than 2500 persons poll 43%  of people that took part in it answered that they found grey haired women and men attractive. Only 4% of asked persons thought grey hair to be unattractive. The great power of public mind is on grey-haired people side.

Grey hair were in fashion in 18th century as we can see thanks to the paintings of famous art members like Thomas Gainsborough, Francois Boucher, and others. Duchess of Devonshire in her powdered silvering grey wig has a fresh complexioned skin tone with blue undertone like a garden rose. Grey hair were considered as a mark of high social status. Only quite well doing people could venture themselves the luxurious wigs in white, grey and lightly colored grey tones made of real human hairs. Moreover, those volume shaped grey hair wigs of 18th century should be generously powdered with oak powder or with starch. What a deepest relief  that we are not obliged to do something sophisticated this way!

 Grey hair is in fashion now: Karl Lagerfeld's and Calvin Klein's favorite supermodel Kristen McMenamy wears her naturally grey hair on the catwalks and says "You can get older and still be rock'n'roll". Even the style icon Kate Moss is going grey and she does it gracefully fashionable. Many of celebrities were driven by this trend: Pink, Kelly Osbourne, Nicole Kidman and Lady Gaga, of course.  

Let's imagine I'm finally encouraged enough to go gray. But would it match my complexion? I want my grey hair suits me very well, and I definitely do not want to look like just a person who've forget the way to stylist. Let's have a look at the charts by the example the celebrities such Jamie Lee Curtis, Helen Mirren, Maye Musk and Meryl Streep.

Superstar Jamie Lee Curtis has a medium skin tone with golden undertone. You can read about medium skin tones in my article about determining skin tones and undertones with charts. She's so lucky about her complexion! When she was a brown-haired person, she hadn't enough contrast of colors in her appearance. But recently Jamie Lee Curtis went grey haired, and we can see a striking change to impressive good-looking. The truth is in the science of colors: the warm tones are in contrast with cool tones. If you put warms and cools nearly, you can see them brighter and more vibrant then they are in itself. This quite clear principle is in use by the world artists and stylists. Hair tone is always opposite to skin tone or skin undertone in the matter of warmth.

I think Jamie Lee Curtis is much prettier with grey hair. Her skin looks vivid, and her expressive eyes are appreciable now. Her appearance gained some special dynamics of tones interaction. That's because of high contrast between very light grey hair and golden warm skin tone. We can see Jamie Lee in search of best matching tone of grey for her skin. In according to the science of tones, warm orange golden is opposite to blues. It doesn't mean Jamie Lee should have her hair in futuristic manga style. But the best matching tone of grey is cool silver for her. We can see in a chart that warm grey hair looks not very fresh on Jamie Lee Curtis.

Stay tuned, more articles with charts are coming soon!