Light Summer makeup: your shades, and how to apply them
Makeup on Light Summer coloring works when it stays as light as you are: pastel, cool, and sheer enough that the skin still shows through it. Below: sixteen finished looks on four complexions, the four steps in the order they go on, and one shade list to take to the counter.
- Four steps, in order
- Four complexions
- Everyday and evening
The order you apply it in
Start here
You are a Light Summer. Here is what to put on.
Your hair, your skin and your eyes all sit high on the value scale and close together, and none of them carries a heavy pigment. There is no dark anchor on your face and no warm one. That is the one fact every choice on this page follows from.
It means your makeup has to stay lighter than most advice allows and cooler than most counters stock. The two ways to lose this face are weight and warmth, and both arrive in the products people are told are safe.
Keep it as light as you are: every shade a step from your own skin, cool, and sheer enough that the skin still shows through it.
The same woman, on a medium complexion. Everything between those two ends is what the rest of this page builds, and all four complexions are in the very next section.
What is on this page
- Looks by your skin tone Four occasions at each of four complexions, with the shade used on every part of the face.
- Why these shades The four swaps that do most of the work, and what makes the ones in your drawer miss.
- How to build it Base, cheeks, eyes, lips, in the order they go on, with the technique for each.
- When you need more What to take further after dark, and the two things that have to stay where they are.
- How to buy it Reading a label, testing a shade, and why the test almost everybody runs cannot work.
- The shade list Every shade on this page in one block, at your depth. Screenshot it and go.
Looks by your skin tone
Start here: the shade names on this page mean little until you have seen them on a face. Four occasions at each of four skin depths, each card naming the shade on every part of the face. Find the depth closest to yours and read across - from five minutes to the most this coloring will carry, which is less than most advice assumes and looks better for it.
If you have fair skin:
- Base Base - rose porcelain
- Blush Petal rose
- Lips Rose nude
- Base Base - rose porcelain
- Blush Petal rose
- Eyes Oyster
- Liner Cool taupe liner
- Lips Rose nude
- Base Base - rose porcelain
- Blush Cool rose
- Eyes Smoke lilac
- Liner Slate blue liner
- Lips Peony pink
- Base Base - rose porcelain
- Blush Soft berry
- Eyes Deep slate
- Liner Soft charcoal
- Lips Blue-based red
If you have light skin:
- Base Base - cool ivory olive
- Blush Cool rose
- Lips Pink beige nude
- Base Base - cool ivory olive
- Blush Cool rose
- Eyes Pale taupe
- Liner Cool taupe liner
- Lips Pink beige nude
- Base Base - cool ivory olive
- Blush Soft berry
- Eyes Storm gray
- Liner Slate blue liner
- Lips Cool raspberry
- Base Base - cool ivory olive
- Blush Soft berry
- Eyes Deep slate
- Liner Soft charcoal
- Lips Blue-based red
If you have medium skin:
- Base Base - rosy beige
- Blush Soft berry
- Lips Mauve nude
- Base Base - rosy beige
- Blush Soft berry
- Eyes Lilac gray
- Liner Cool taupe liner
- Lips Mauve nude
- Base Base - rosy beige
- Blush Soft berry
- Eyes Cool plum
- Liner Slate blue liner
- Lips Soft berry lip
- Base Base - rosy beige
- Blush Muted plum rose
- Eyes Deep slate
- Liner Soft charcoal
- Lips Blue-based red
If you have deep skin:
- Base Base - cool deep brown
- Blush Muted plum rose
- Lips Cocoa rose nude
- Base Base - cool deep brown
- Blush Muted plum rose
- Eyes Soft mink
- Liner Cool taupe liner
- Lips Cocoa rose nude
- Base Base - cool deep brown
- Blush Muted plum rose
- Eyes Cool plum
- Liner Slate blue liner
- Lips Soft berry lip
- Base Base - cool deep brown
- Blush Muted plum rose
- Eyes Deep slate
- Liner Soft charcoal
- Lips Blue-based red
Read down any column and the shade names change with the depth - Petal rose on fair skin becomes Muted plum rose on deep - while the occasion stays the same. The name has to move because the value does: the pink that reads as a flush on porcelain disappears on deep brown. Which raises the question the next section answers - why these particular shades, and not the ones already in your drawer?
Why these shades, and not the ones you own
Those sixteen faces are built from a small number of swaps. Here are the four that carry most of it, each beside the shade people with this coloring usually own instead. None of the four is wrong by color family. They are wrong by weight, or by warmth.
Why these shades and not those
Tap a productSoft charcoal is already the darkest thing on your face, which is all a liner needs to be. True black is darker than anything you own naturally, so it stops reading as your lashes and starts reading as a line drawn on top of them.
Bronze does two things your eye cannot absorb: it is warm, and it is metallic. On a cool, low-pigment lid it reads as a separate object with a glow of its own, and your eye color goes gray behind it.
A flush on your skin is pink, never orange. Terracotta is a shade your cheek cannot produce on its own, so instead of reading as blood under the skin it reads as a product sitting on it.
A wine lip carries more depth than any feature on your face, so it becomes the anchor and everything above it looks washed out by comparison. A clear cool red at half the depth gives the same evening signal without stealing the face.
Notice which side moves. The shade that works changes name as complexion deepens - petal rose on fair skin is plum rose on deep - so there is no single right hex; yours is in the cheat-sheet. The shade that fails does not move at all: it fails on weight or on warmth, and neither is a property of skin. Liner is the exception that proves it - soft charcoal is soft charcoal on everyone. Hexes on the failing side are representative examples, not measured products.
What the four have in common is the size of the step, not the hue. Every shade in your palette is light and cool, so there is very little depth and no warmth on your face to begin with - which is exactly why anything heavy or golden becomes the only thing anyone sees.
Knowing which shade to buy is half of it. The other half is where it goes and how thin it stays, and that is far easier to show in order than to describe.
How to build it, step by step
So here are those swaps in the order they go on. Four steps. The shades are the easy half; what follows each one is the technique that keeps a light face from either vanishing under product or being taken over by it.
-
Base
Sheer, cool, and gone at the jaw
Your base shades, by depth
Your season fixes the undertone - cool to neutral-cool, with a rose rather than a gold in it. Only your own skin decides how deep it goes.
Fair - Foundation Base - rose porcelain #EFD9CF
- Bronzer Bronze - pale taupe #C9AE9C
- Highlighter Glow - cool pearl #F2E4DC
Light - Foundation Base - cool ivory olive #DCC3AE
- Bronzer Bronze - soft taupe #B79781
- Highlighter Glow - pink pearl #EBD3C6
Medium - Foundation Base - rosy beige #C09A80
- Bronzer Bronze - mid taupe #96705A
- Highlighter Glow - champagne pearl #DFC0A8
Deep - Foundation Base - cool deep brown #7A5442
- Bronzer Bronze - deep taupe #6B4A3A
- Highlighter Glow - rose pearl #C79A85
If you fall between two depths, take the lighter one: this skin reads sallow under a base that sits half a step dark, and a warm base shows at the jawline before it shows anywhere else.
Coverage is the real decision here, not shade. This skin flushes easily and evenly, and that flush is most of the life in your face - a full-coverage base takes it out and leaves a flat, pale plane that then needs blush to look alive again. Sheer to medium, pressed in over the center of the face with fingers or a damp sponge, thinned to nothing toward the hairline and jaw.
Bronzer is a shadow, never a tan. One or two steps deeper than your skin, cool-taupe in family, kept high on the cheekbone and blended until it reads as the light in the room rather than as a stripe. Highlighter is a narrow satin band on the top of the cheekbone and the bridge of the nose; a fine pearl lifts this skin, a visible sparkle sits on it like texture.
Tip Powder only where the skin moves - the T-zone, if that. A full mattifying layer takes away the light this face runs on.
-
Cheeks
A flush, not a shape
Blush is the first color that goes on, and on this coloring it does the job contour does on a darker face: it decides where the eye goes.
Blush
Cream before powder, always - cream sinks into skin and reads as a flush, which is the only thing blush should read as here. Press it high on the cheekbone with a finger and feather it back toward the temple in one pass; a round spot on the apple gives a doll cheek on a face this light. Build in two thin passes and stop as soon as you can see it. Petal rose and cool rose are the everyday pair; the berry and the plum rose belong to the deeper complexions and to evening.
Petal rose #EFC3C6 
Cool rose #E0A3A8 
Soft berry #C98A96 
Muted plum rose #A96C7C Tip If it reads as a color rather than a flush, it went on too heavy, not too pink. Take half of it off with a clean finger.
-
Eyes
One wash, one smudge, and the lashes
Brows, lid, lashes - in that order, each one setting the ceiling for the one after it.
Brows
Brows come first, and here they are the easiest place to overdo, because a defined brow is the one thing every tutorial promises. Fill only the gaps, with short strokes in the direction the hair grows, in a powder or a soft gel one shade cooler than your hair and never deeper than it. Brush up and leave the edge feathered - a drawn outline is heavier than anything else on this face.
Ash blonde brow #B7A794 
Light ash brow #9C8B7C 
Mid ash brow #7A6A5E 
Cool deep brow #584C46 Everyday eyeshadow
One shade is enough by day: a pale cool wash across the whole lid, blended up to just below the crease and out to nothing. A second, slightly deeper shade in the outer third is as far as a daytime eye goes. The lid stays lighter than the lashes, and the whole thing reads as clean rather than made up.
Oyster #E4D8D2 
Pale taupe #C9B9B2 
Lilac gray #B7ADBC 
Soft mink #9A8B87 Eyeliner
Liner lives in the lash roots, not above them. Tightline the upper waterline, or draw a thin line and smudge it into the lashes before it sets - a crisp wing asks for a contrast this face does not have. Cool taupe by day, charcoal or slate when you want the eye to carry more; all four sit the same on every depth.
Soft charcoal #5A5C63 
Cool taupe liner #7C6E68 
Slate blue liner #5D6B7C 
Deep plum liner #5E4757 Mascara
Mascara does the defining that liner is not doing. Wiggle the brush into the root and draw out, one thin coat, a second only on the outer lashes, and leave the lower lashes bare by day. Gray-brown on the two lighter complexions, brown-black on the deeper two; navy is an evening trick that makes light eyes look clearer.
Gray brown #6B625E 
Soft brown black #4A4644 
Cool navy #3E4A5C 
Plum brown #584349 Tip If someone can name what you are wearing on your eyes, one thing is a step too dark or one edge is a step too sharp.
-
Lips
It should read as your own mouth
The last step, and the one where this coloring can take the most color - provided it stays pink-based and stays sheer.
Nude shades
Apply from a finger rather than the bullet: a thinner layer, a softer edge, and the edge is what decides whether it reads as makeup or as you. Skip lip liner by day. A nude here is pink-based, never beige - a beige nude erases the mouth on a cool face - and if a shade makes you look tired it is sitting too light for your depth, so go one shade down the list before you go warmer.
Rose nude #E0B4B0 
Pink beige nude #D3A399 
Mauve nude #BC8E90 
Cocoa rose nude #9C6E68 Tip One thin layer pressed in beats one full coat - a heavy coat sets an edge you will spend the day repairing.
That is the whole daytime face. Which leaves the question that comes next in every conversation about it: what do you change when the light drops?
Your evening face: what changes, and what must not
Less than you would think, and not in the direction you would guess. Evening is not a darker face, it is the same one with two things taken a step clearer and a short list of things that have to stay exactly where they are. Below, each of the four depths by day and by evening, the same woman in both frames.
Eyes
The lid centre does not move, and nothing on the eye goes darker than the deepest shade on your palette. Everything you add goes at the outer end - the crease, the outer corner and the outer half of the lower lash line - and it is a step of color, not a step of black.
- Wash one pale shade over the whole lid, edge to edge.
- Take the evening shade through the crease and into the outer corner.
- Carry it along the outer half of the lower lash line - not the inner half.
- Leave the centre of the lid the lightest point, in a satin finish rather than a shimmer.
- Blend every join until you cannot find an edge with a fingertip.
The rule Extend the range at the outer end, never at the dark end. A black liner or a brown-black smoke is the move that turns evening into weight.
Oyster stays on the lid; smoke lilac takes the crease and the outer corner, and that is already your deepest move - storm gray on top of it reads as a bruise on porcelain.
Deepest here
Lightest here
Lower lashes: outer half
Pale taupe on the lid, storm gray through the crease and the outer corner, carried a little further out than it would go on fair skin.
Deepest here
Lightest here
Lower lashes: outer half
Lilac gray on the lid, cool plum through the crease and the outer corner. Plum is your evening accent here, never your lid.
Deepest here
Lightest here
Lower lashes: outer half
Cool plum moves onto the lid itself and deep slate takes the crease and the outer corner - it has to travel further out and further up before it registers against your own depth.
Deepest here
Lightest here
Lower lashes: outer half
Lips
The same pink family, one step clearer. What does not change is the edge - a clear shade with a drawn outline is the one version of this that will wear you.
- Press the first layer in with a finger rather than straight from the bullet.
- Blot it once.
- Build a second layer through the middle of the lip only.
- Leave the outer edge soft. No liner ring, at any hour.
The rule On this palette a nude and a colored lip are the same family at two clarities. The line between them moves with your skin, not with the hour.
Rose nude by day, peony pink by evening. Cool raspberry is the outer limit before the mouth starts wearing you.
Edge stays soft
Build through the middle
Pink-beige nude by day, cool raspberry by evening. Soft berry is the limit.
Edge stays soft
Build through the middle
Mauve nude by day, soft berry by evening. The blue-based red is your limit, and on you it lands lighter than it looks in the swatch.
Edge stays soft
Build through the middle
Cocoa rose nude by day, the blue-based red by evening - on you it reads as a clear pink-red rather than as red, which is the point.
Edge stays soft
Build through the middle
What must not change
Clearer does not mean sharper. Every line you softened by day stays softened; a liner that still reads crisp at arm's length is the thing that will date the whole look.
Satin, not frost and not glitter. Particle sparkle throws small points of pure white onto a face that has no pure white in it, and frost turns a pastel lid icy.
No dark product arrives after dark. A blue-based red at full clarity is an evening lip; a wine is somebody else's evening lip, and the hour does not change that.
Evening is not the moment to add coverage. Night light is harder than daylight and a flash is harder still, so a heavier base is exactly what turns into a mask in the photographs.
One line to carry out of this section: your evening face is clearer, never heavier. And whether it lands that way depends on something that is not the shade at all.
Why the right shade can still look wrong
Because a shade is only half a product. Finish is the other half, nobody reads it on the label, and on coloring this light it decides nearly as much as the color does - a sparkle is a bright point on a face that has no bright points of its own. Below is one lipstick and one mouth, photographed four times. Only the finish changes.
One shade, four finishes
What separates them is the specular highlight - the small, hard reflection a shiny surface throws back. It is white, or near enough. Your coloring is light, but it is soft light: there is no pure white in it and no hard edge anywhere. So a highlight behaves exactly like the heavy product this whole page is trying to avoid, from the opposite direction - it becomes the sharpest thing present, and it lands on whatever you put it on.
Matte has none of it. Satin scatters it into a soft band you read as skin. Shimmer breaks it into dozens of small ones. Gloss concentrates it into a single point. That is the whole ranking, and it holds for every product on your face, not just the lip.
Where finish is hardest to judge
Eyeshadow has a finish choice too - matte or satin by day, satin by evening, glitter never - but it is the one product already photographed twice on this page, in the everyday and evening sections, so it stays in the list below rather than getting a third comparison.
What that means product by product
- Base
- Satin. Not a dewy glass finish, and not full matte either - flat skin loses the returned light that keeps a light complexion looking fresh.
- Blush
- Cream over powder. It sits in the skin instead of on it, and reads as a flush rather than as a color.
- Eyeshadow
- Matte or satin by day, satin by evening. Glitter and frost at no point - the particles are the gloss problem multiplied, and frost turns a pastel lid icy.
- Brows
- Powder or a soft gel. A waxy pencil leaves a line that also shines, which is two problems in one stroke.
- Lips
- Satin first, matte second. If you want shine, a sheer balm over a satin shade buys the softness without the hard point.
- Highlighter
- Soft cool pearl, never a metallic edge and never a gold one. The same rule as gloss, on a larger surface and higher on the face.
The honest answer is about finish rather than about you. A satin base with powder only where you actually shine holds better on this coloring than a full matte base does - full matte flattens the one thing light skin has going for it, and by mid-afternoon it has broken unevenly anyway. Set the T-zone, leave the rest, and carry blotting paper instead of more powder.
How to get the right one home
Everything above assumes you can get the shade home, and this is the part the shade lists skip: how to read a label, how to test, and why the test almost everybody runs cannot work.
The jaw test
- Put three shades side by side straight across the jaw - not on your arm, not on your hand.
- Blend all three out.
- Go and find a window. Shop lighting is warm, and warm light is the one thing that makes a golden base look right on you.
- The right one is the one you cannot find again. Not the one that looks nicest - the one you lose.
The whole shade grid, and the square that is yours
A foundation range is one big grid too: how deep the shade is down the side, which way it leans across the top. Below is that grid with only Light Summer plotted on it.
The outlined column is the answer, top to bottom: one undertone letter, any depth you are. A Light Summer in porcelain and a Light Summer in deep brown ask for the same letter and get a different number - which is why the request is always your depth plus cool, never a shade name off a poster.
Three honest notes. The cool column is our values, not a brand’s - the same letter is a slightly different color in every range, and the depth number never transfers between brands at all, so no chart can print a shade you can order by name. The neutral, olive and warm squares are illustrations: each is the cool shade at that depth pushed toward that undertone, named the way a brand would name it, so you can recognise the wrong prefix on a shelf before you see what it does at the jaw. And neutral is a maybe rather than a no - a neutral that reads pink on you belongs in the cool column, and the jaw test decides.
Reading a shade name
A name is a hint, not a promise. Brands use these words inconsistently and some of them mean nothing at all. They narrow the shelf; the jaw test decides.
What the finish words on a label actually mean
- Radiant, luminous, glow
- Dewy. Wearable if you set it, and a lot if you do not.
- Satin, natural
- What you are looking for.
- Demi-matte, soft matte
- Also good - matte without going flat.
- Matte, velvet, full coverage
- Flattens you. See the finishes section above.
- Metallic, foil, frost
- The gloss problem, in a pan - and frost turns a pastel icy.
Judging a swatch photo online
Swatch photos are shot under bright, flat, flattering light, and that light lifts a light shade toward white - a cool rose photographs as a baby pink, and a pale lid shade disappears altogether. Two things help. Look for swatches on skin rather than in the pan, and prefer photos that have a shadow somewhere in them: a shade that still reads as its own color where the light falls off is the color you will get.
Shade ranges are reformulated and discontinued constantly, a name that is right this year is gone the next, and a recommendation nobody has checked is still a recommendation somebody spends money on. The method above outlasts any list - it works in a shop you have never heard of, on a brand that did not exist when this was written.
When your makeup does not work
You have the shades now, the order they go on in, and how to buy them. This is the section you come back to later: two ways a Light Summer face goes wrong even with the right products, and then the shades that go wrong whatever you do with them.
Two ways it goes wrong
The makeup wears you
- What it looks like
- In a photo the eye lands on the lipstick or the liner first and finds your face second. Friends say you look "done" rather than well.
- Why
- There is no dark anchor on this face, so a single deep or saturated product has nothing to answer to. It becomes the contrast, and everything you own naturally recedes behind it.
- Fix
- Keep the shade family and take the weight out: sheer it, blend the edge to nothing, or step one shade lighter. The color was rarely the problem; the amount was.
It disappears, and reads as washed out
- What it looks like
- You put on a full face and look about the same, or slightly gray. People ask if you are tired.
- Why
- Light got mistaken for pale. Shades that sit at your own skin depth or below it add no definition at all, and a beige nude or an ash-beige lid erases the little color you have.
- Fix
- Hold the lightness and add clarity, not depth: a clearer pink on the mouth, a cool wash with a visible cast on the lid, a flush you can see. The step is a step of color, never a step of dark.
And the shades that never work
Every shade below fails for one of three reasons, and once you can name which one, you can predict the next one yourself without a list.
Base and glow
- Golden beige warm
- Honey tan warm
- Dark mocha base heavy
- Bronze shimmer warm
- Gray-beige powder dull
Golden and the base argues with a rose undertone at the jaw; too deep and the face goes sallow under it; a gold or bronze glow puts metal on skin that has none.
Cheeks
- Terracotta warm
- Bronze blush warm
- Deep wine blush heavy
- Beige-brown contour dull
The cheek is where warmth shows first and where depth shows most. Terracotta, bronze and brick all read as a stain rather than a flush; a deep wine blush is a bruise.
Eyes
- True black heavy
- Copper metallic warm
- Espresso brown heavy
- Khaki olive dull
A dark or metallic lid is the most common mistake on this face, and the one every smoky-eye tutorial pushes you toward. Black, bronze and copper all put an anchor on the eye that your hair and skin cannot balance.
Lips
- Orange red warm
- Deep wine heavy
- Chocolate brown heavy
- Beige nude dull
Orange-based reds and browns fail on warmth; a black-cherry or a chocolate fails on weight; and the beige nude - the safe choice on every counter - is the opposite mistake, and gets made as often as all the others together.
Why each one fails
- heavyToo heavy
- Too deep or too saturated for a face with no dark in it. It becomes the anchor, and the anchor is the first thing anyone sees.
- warmToo warm
- Gold, orange, bronze, copper. Your undertone is cool rose, and warmth on top of it reads as sallow rather than as sunny.
- dullToo dull
- The over-correction. Beige, khaki, gray-brown - shades so quiet they sit below your own coloring and erase the little color you have.
The three tags above are the whole rule. A shade that is none of them is usually wearable even if it never appears on your palette - and a shade that is two of them is not worth trying on. Hexes here are representative examples of each mistake, not measured values from a product.
Your shades, in one block
Everything on this page in one place, so you can stop reading and start shopping. Screenshot it. The three base products are matched to your depth; every other family runs light to deep, so the first shade is the fair end and the last is the deep end.
- FFair
- LLight
- MMedium
- DDeep
Base: foundation, bronzer and glow
- Base - rose porcelain #EFD9CF
- Base - cool ivory olive #DCC3AE
- Base - rosy beige #C09A80
- Base - cool deep brown #7A5442
- Bronze - pale taupe #C9AE9C
- Bronze - soft taupe #B79781
- Bronze - mid taupe #96705A
- Bronze - deep taupe #6B4A3A
- Glow - cool pearl #F2E4DC
- Glow - pink pearl #EBD3C6
- Glow - champagne pearl #DFC0A8
- Glow - rose pearl #C79A85
- Petal rose #EFC3C6
- Cool rose #E0A3A8
- Soft berry #C98A96
- Muted plum rose #A96C7C
Eyes: shadow, liner, mascara
- Oyster #E4D8D2
- Pale taupe #C9B9B2
- Lilac gray #B7ADBC
- Soft mink #9A8B87
- Smoke lilac #8C7F94
- Storm gray #767A85
- Cool plum #7A5F70
- Deep slate #5B5F6B
- Soft charcoal #5A5C63
- Cool taupe liner #7C6E68
- Slate blue liner #5D6B7C
- Deep plum liner #5E4757
- Gray brown #6B625E
- Soft brown black #4A4644
- Cool navy #3E4A5C
- Plum brown #584349
- Ash blonde brow #B7A794
- Light ash brow #9C8B7C
- Mid ash brow #7A6A5E
- Cool deep brow #584C46
Lips: nudes and color
- Rose nude #E0B4B0
- Pink beige nude #D3A399
- Mauve nude #BC8E90
- Cocoa rose nude #9C6E68
- Peony pink #E79FAE
- Cool raspberry #C56C86
- Soft berry lip #A85A72
- Blue-based red #B5455A
Liner and mascara are the same on everyone. Photographs of every base shade on four complexions, and the full clothing palette, live on the palette page. The full Light Summer palette →
Questions people ask
What kind of makeup should I use for a Light Summer?
What eyeshadow colors are best for a Light Summer?
What colors should a Light Summer avoid in makeup?
Can a Light Summer wear red lipstick?
What foundation undertone should a Light Summer use?
What if I am between two skin depths?
Which brands or products should I buy?
Where this came from
Six sources, and what each one is holding up: that makeup works by changing the contrast of a face and how much of it a young, low-contrast face can take; what a flush actually is; why depth and undertone are two different things a base has to match; why a gloss reads as a bright point; and why the shop lamp and the window disagree.
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Aspects of facial contrast decrease with age and are cues for age perception (opens in a new tab)
Porcheron, Mauger & Russell, PLoS ONE, 2013
Behind the premise in start here and the two failure modes in when it goes wrong. Facial contrast - how much the eyes, brows and mouth stand out from the surrounding skin - is measurable, it is what cosmetics increase, and it is read as a cue for age. A Light Summer starts with less of it than most faces, which is why the question on this page is never which color so much as how much contrast to add.
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Differential effects of makeup on perceived age (opens in a new tab)
Porcheron, Mauger, Soppelsa et al., British Journal of Psychology, 2019
Behind the makeup wears you. In controlled photographs makeup made 40- and 50-year-old women look younger - and made 20-year-old women look older. Adding contrast to a face that already has the contrast of youth pushes it past its own level, which is the mechanism this page keeps describing as a product becoming the anchor.
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Skin blood perfusion and oxygenation colour affect perceived human health (opens in a new tab)
Stephen, Coetzee, Law Smith & Perrett, PLoS ONE, 2009
Behind the cheeks step and the cream-over-powder call. When people are allowed to adjust the color of a face to look healthiest, they add the color of oxygenated blood under the skin. That is what a blush is imitating - which is why a cream that sinks in reads as a flush and a powder sitting on top reads as a product, and why the flush on this coloring is pink rather than orange.
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Non-invasive measurements of skin pigmentation in situ (opens in a new tab)
Stamatas, Zmudzka, Kollias & Beer, Pigment Cell Research, 2004
Behind the two axes of the shade grid in how to shop. Skin color is two signals, not one: melanin sets how much light is absorbed - the depth - and hemoglobin in the dermal capillaries adds its own, which has to be separated out to measure either. A base has to match both, and they are the two axes every brand’s shade finder is drawn on.
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The dark side of gloss (opens in a new tab)
Kim, Marlow & Anderson, Nature Neuroscience, 2012
Behind the whole of finishes. The visual system reads gloss from specular highlights - and from their dark counterparts - and the percept collapses when they are blurred or misplaced. A gloss lip is a hard highlight; a satin lip is that highlight blurred into a band; a matte lip has none. That is the ranking on the page, and the reason the ranking holds on every product.
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CIE 13.3-1995: Method of measuring and specifying colour rendering properties of light sources (opens in a new tab)
International Commission on Illumination (CIE), 1995
Behind the jaw test in how to shop. A light source is rated on how faithfully it reveals the colors of the things under it, and shop lighting is warm and rates low - which is why a golden base looks right under the counter lamp and wrong at the window, and why the test has to happen at the window.
One honest distinction. The contrast research, the skin biology, the gloss perception and the lighting standard above are sourced; which blush, shadow and lipstick shades belong to a Light Summer, which one plays which part at each depth, and where the evening ceiling sits are our own analysis, built from the palette on the parent page. No study has been published on any of that, which we would rather state than disguise with a citation.