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Rule #3 – Colour Like a Pro
We’ve saved the best for last! Using products that are in perfect harmony with your skin tone is much more important than spending loads of money on luxurious products. With the wrong shade of lipstick, blush or foundation you could end up looking dried out, oily, orange, grey or even white, regardless of the price you’ve paid.
Your eyeliner, lipliner, eyeshadow, eyebrow filler and foundation should match as closely as possible to your natural skin tone and the only ‘colourful’ cosmetics in your ‘No Makeup’ makeup look should be your blusher and lipstick. In Rule #3 we’re giving you our top tips on how to find the best blush and lipsticks for your skin tone.
Blusher
First check whether your current blusher is a good match to your natural cheek flush. You can do this by running around the block (a few laps of the garden or a burst of star jumps will do the trick too), before standing in front of a mirror and checking your blusher against your flushed cheeks. If the colour isn’t a close enough match, you’ll need to experiment with new options.
Cool pink tones to warm peach tones
Our Tips: Collect blush samples from drugstore tester pots in as many different shades as you can. Take a bundle of sandwich bags with you (as some makeup counters don’t offer sample pots) and use the tip of a clean nail file or pair of tweezers to scrape off a small sample of product from the tester and pop it into one of the bags. Remember to write the details of each product on its bag to avoid any confusion at home when you finally find your perfect colour.
This is a great way to experiment with lots of different product options by the way, without having to splash out upfront.
Once you’re at home, try and organise the different blush samples from cool tones to warm tones (pinks to peaches) and experiment strategically until you can narrow down your options to just 2-3 colours. Take a photo of each blush try-on, so later you can compare them to each other. With each blush trial, consider the 3-dimensions of colour: coolness-warmth, lightness-darkness and vividness-muteness qualities, in order to accurately assess the results.
Lips
One of the most common requests we get during a Personal Colour Consultation is a natural ‘No Makeup’ makeup lipstick option that harmonises well with one’s newly found colour tone. Especially when the client turns out to be a ‘bright’ or ‘dark season’.
Bright Winter client with natural lipstick
In almost every case we end up using a regular red or pink lipstick even when aiming for a natural lip finish. Instead of applying the strong red or pink straight onto the lips, we first prime the lips with a generous layer of lip balm.
Then, using a small brush, we slowly work a small amount of the lipstick colour into the lip balm that’s now starting to set in. Adding a small amount each time to build the desired finish, sometimes even mixing a bit from 2-3 different lipsticks to get that perfectly matched ‘No Makeup’ makeup lip tone, like with our client on the left.
We recommend collecting a range of cooler and warmer drugstore lipstick samples for your experiments, but you can start by gathering all of your lipsticks and tinted lip balms to begin your analysis. Don’t worry when a colour is bolder, try testing a tiny amount of it blended with some bees wax or lip balm to sheer it out. The key is to gently enhance your natural lip colour whilst still achieving a makeup-free look.
Our Tips: Find a spot for your mirror next to a window where you’ll get lots of natural light, so you can see even the most subtle visual affects clearly. It’s a good idea to take photos of each product you try, as the pictures will later serve as reference for easy side by side comparisons.
Also, cameras capture information in a flattened-down, ‘shot-as-seen’ format, so often it’s easier to spot colour differences that you may have missed in the mirror, by examining it again in a photo. For example, at first you may not spot a greying effect on your skin, a blemish, a bit of reddening here and there, or the strengthening of fine lines or dark circles in the mirror, but you might notice it later when comparing photos of various colour trials.
Getting the colours right will take time, so just be patient and experiment whenever you can! To get you started, click here to download and print the free ‘No Makeup’ Makeup Checklist, to make sure you don’t miss any important steps. Keep it with your makeup as a quick reference until you know it by heart 🙂
