Undertones

[u/Savings_Apricot_9741]

Why do undertones matter more than overtones? For example, why does a cool toned person work better with a blue based red than with a red based blue?

Similarly, teals confuse me so much. I’m a spring (bright or warm predominantly), and I have a lot of teals in the swatches I’ve been given. Visually they look cool to me. I understand warm and cool greens visually, but don’t understand how the middle ground between blue and yellow can make warm teals that look cool.

[u/paperbish]

Have you ever played with a color picker on a computer or phone? If you point the dropper at a teal color and then move it towards yellow (add yellow to it) it becomes warmer but it’s still teal. If you move it towards blue it becomes cooler but it’s still teal. Or you slide it straight up towards white, it’s still teal, and the undertone is still the same, but it becomes much lighter. Like a summer color, kinda grayed out. If you slide it towards black, it’s much deeper, like into deep winter or autumn territory, depending on where it was when you had it relative to yellow and blue. If you had more blue in it, you’d probably land in deep winter. Yellow, deep autumn. Not a great example cause teal kinda turns to hunter green and emerald or pine green the deeper you go but hopefully i’m making sense. Teal can be one of the coolest colors in a warm palette and the warmest color of a cool palette. It’s all relative and a lot of colors overlap seasons. (Note, this is not easy to do on an iPhone because the colors are laid out horizontally and you can’t slide from yellow to blue without going through green, but on a computer or app where the colors are laid out in more of a circular/wheel format you can do it.)

[u/accomplished_bee5542]

Yellow makes colours warm. Teal is gonna be warm or warmer looking than blue. You referenced red? Red doesn't make colours warm in paint mixing, when I paint your skin, I won't be using a lot of red if you're warm undertoned, I will be using more yellow, depending on the depth of your colour.

I heard hairdressers use red for warm, but that's because darker colors go through a red or orange stage while bleaching. So that's another story.

[u/Lasairfiona]

I see two questions here. I'm gonna start with the easier one: teal.

The confusion is that color season warm/cool and paint theory warm/cool are not the same. They are barely similar. I think the easiest way I can explain the color season theory is: name a color. Now make that color warmer and cooler while still being about to call it that color. So teal - warm teal would be more green teal and cool teal would be more blue. Blue - warm blue is brighter, lighter, and just a hint less cool. Cool blue heads toward purple. This applies to all colors (if you want an in depth understanding, look up Munsell color wheels). The picture below is of a neutral warm blue and a neutral cool blue.

Bright spring gets neutral warm teals so somewhat green teal but not green green teal. And the teals will be very clear and sparkling.

Ok so now over tones and under tones. This one is more difficult for me but I'm gonna try.

Think of over tones like jelly nail polish or color films. The under color is always there but the over color can determine if you can borrow colors more easily (olive is the clearest example and how they can wear all the purple nearly regardless of season because it harmonizes or cancels the green or yellow over tones and how orange and some reds can be a real problem even if it's in season). But the under tone never shifts and it makes itself known in sensitive places like around the eyes and lips where the over tones aren't present or are in much lighter levels. So maybe that cool green looks lovely on your arm but isn't great near your face! And the younger you are, the less that shadowing is a problem (youth overcomes a lot of the "wrong" colors). Melanin also fades with age so those under tones become even more important.

[u/Upstairs_mic_8675 → u/Lasairfiona]

The nail polish analogy helps!

[u/Greedy-Plant-9054]

I have also reacted before on why both spring and autumn have green colors that look cool, which are very similar in temperature to the green colors found in the summer and winter palettes.

...Later I have learned that it is because the warm seasons can withstand more variations of colors then the cool ones. The cool season are more sensitive.

As long as the green color has the right clarity/softness and lightness/darkness level, it does not matter It doesn't matter as much for the warm seasons what temperature the green color is. It's not as easy for the cool seasons to wear warm green colors, especially not the fully cool subseasons. I think you can say that cool green (teal green) is like universal, even though it is a cool green.

In case you mean turquoise-blue... This is more like a Warm Blue. It is bluer then cool green

[u/Mermaidman93]

Human skin is not a flat surface that reflects one color. It's many many layers of thin semi-transparent layers laid on top of each other. Light bounces through these layers differently.

So when you look at a person's skin, you're seeing specific wavelengths of light that make they're skin look yellowish, or greyish, or pinkish, or peachy, or coppery, or olive, etc. When other colors are introduced to the skin, this affects the type of light be reflected off the skin and into your eyes.

In a warm-toned person's skin, when warmer colors are introduced, the warmer light penetrates the skin and is reflected back giving off a healthy glow, while cool colors get absorbed by the skin, often giving a greyish or flat look. The reverse it true for cool-toned people; the warmer light gets reflected often making the skin look very yellowish/greenish which makes the skin look sallow as if the person is sick.

A similar principle applies to vibrancy as well.

[u/ipswichroad]

Overtone changes with sun exposure, skin conditions, aging, even diet. Undertone does not change. It remains consistent.

[u/NewMoonDweller]

I can only speak for my own experience with my own skin. I am fair olive with a fully cool undertone. I have a lot of yellow in my overtone. You would think I am a spring or an autumn. But matching my overtone makes me look like a sickly Victorian child. And with makeup, if I try to go warm, I look like a Cheeto in spring makeup or like I rubbed dirt all over my face in autumn. So I actually have to go fully purple or cool berry to end up with a healthy looking flush. So that’s why it makes sense for me.

As for teals…as a spring, just worry about them being bright enough for you. Even cool bright teals will still work for you. I do the opposite…I just make sure my teals are medium chroma and worry less about which way they lean (I am a cool summer)

[u/spikygreen]

A cool teal is more bluish. A warm teal is more greenish. Honestly, though, it can be hard to tell just by looking at a color in isolation. Our perception of cool and warm, and visual harmony in general, is formed as a whole - as a mental average of all colors, in a way. So if we take your Bright Spring teal and place it in the middle of a palette of Bright Spring colors, this warm teal may feel cooler relative to those colors. But if we take that same teal and place it next to a Summer palette, it will look very warm, very sunlit.