How To Choose The Best Lipstick For Your Skintone

Picture this: you’re window shopping for vegan, fruit-pigmented beauty products, and you decide to treat yourself to a luscious lipstick or two.

You know you’d like something pink, so you check out the shade range–only to feel entirely overwhelmed.

Even if you’ve been a makeup lover for years, this is still an incredibly common (and understandable) experience. Finding the best lipstick for your skintone is no small feat; beauty retailers offer more options than ever before, but only a handful are sure to complement your own unique beauty.

Have you ever tried on a taupe nude lipstick, only to find it made you look ill? Or perhaps that fiery red shade you loved in-store looks too orange on you?

This is because when it comes to finding the best lipstick for your skintone, undertone matters! And today, we’re here to decipher everything about it!

First, let’s discuss what an undertone is, and how to identify yours.

Whether your skin is incredibly fair or on the deep side, you should be able to categorize your skin as one of the following: warm, cool, and neutral.

From there, you then determine your shade range, which is generally fair, medium, or deep.

You can learn more tricks to help you determine your skin’s undertone in our blog here, but in this article, we’re going to give a rapid-fire strategy so you can determine the best lipstick for your skin tone.

Warm-toned individuals tend to have a hue to their skin that’s either olive, yellow or golden, and you can tell you’re warm if you tend to look best in gold jewelry, and if the veins in your wrist have a greenish color to them.

If you have a cool undertone, this means that your skin has a pink, red, or bluish hue, and you can tell you’re a cool undertone if the veins in your wrist are on the bluer side, if you find you look best in silver jewelry, or if you’re more likely to burn than tan when you’re in the sun.

Then, there’s the neutral undertone. Those with a neutral undertone have a mix of pink and yellow in their skin, and they tend to look great in both silver and gold.

Now that we know a thing or two about undertone, let’s talk about how to find the best lipstick for your skintone.

As with most things in makeup, there really isn’t an exact formula for determining the best lipstick for your skintone. Not only are there exceptions to the rule of undertones, but you still may shop online for lipsticks, find one you believe will match your skintone, and order it only to find that the shade looks different from the pictures.

At the end of the day, you’re going to get the best information by trying on lipsticks for yourself. This means trying on lipstick in store, or performing a simple swatch on the inside of your arm.

But at 100% Pure, we wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to find the best lipstick for your skin tone, so we created this guide! Read on to learn which of our Fruit Pigmented® lipsticks look best with your skintone.

The rule of thumb is simple: if your undertone is warm, opt for warm-toned lipsticks.

But if you’re not well-versed in color theory, we’re here to simplify things.

Warm-hued lipsticks tend to have reddish, orange, peachy, or even yellowish undertones like corals, golds, and browns.

For the perfect warm nude, stick with something on the peachy side, and go for pinks with warm-hued corals. If you’re a warm undertone, you can even rock a fiery red or a bold orange, but if you prefer something more subdued, any rosy-pink shade will look stunning on you.

If you have a warm undertone, here are some of our favorite shades for you:

Warm Nudes
Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in “Pink Canyon”
Fruit Pigmented® Pomegranate Oil Anti-Aging Lipstick in “Calendula”
Lip Caramel in “Butterchew”

Pinks
Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in Prickly Pear
Fruit Pigmented® Lip Gloss in Strawberry
Fruit Pigmented® Pomegranate Oil Anti-Aging Lipstick in Primrose

Corals
Fruit Pigmented® Lip Glaze in Coraline
Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter in Strawberry Cactus
Fruit Pigmented® Pomegranate Oil Anti-Aging Lipstick in Magnolia

Fiery Reds
Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in “Cactus Bloom”
Fruit Pigmented® Pomegranate Oil Anti-Aging Lipstick in “Hibiscus”
Lip Caramel in “Scotch Kiss”

Naturally, those with a cool undertone look best in cool-toned lipstick shades.

But what do cool-toned lipsticks look like?

Cool-toned lipsticks can be found in hues like cherry, wine, plum, mauve, crimson, and violets. For instance, your ideal red lipstick will be more toward a deep bluish-red, like crimson or cherry. Berry shades tend to look especially flattering if you’re cool-toned.

For the perfect nude lip, bring out the natural flush in your lips with a mauve pink, or opt for a taupe for a more subtle look.

Cool Nudes:
Fruit Pigmented® Pomegranate Oil Anti-Aging Lipstick in Foxglove

Cool Pinks:
Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in Plume Pink
Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in Mirage
Fruit Pigmented® Lip Glaze in Fig

Berry Tones:
Lip Caramel in Cherry Cordial
Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in Marrakesh
Fruit Pigmented® Lip Glaze in Rhubarb

Purples:
Matte Lipstick: Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in Winecup
Fruit Pigmented® Pomegranate Oil Anti-Aging Lipstick in Black Rose
Matte Lipstick: Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in Hyacinthus

So, you’ve tried every one of the tricks to determine your undertone, and you’ve found that you look just as beautiful in your gold necklace as you do in your silver one.

This likely means that you have a neutral undertone, and good news: just about every lipstick shade looks great on you!

As a neutral undertone, you’ll be able to rock warm or cool lipsticks, so feel free to try that berry-magenta shade, or that bold orange gloss. The possibilities are endless when everything suits you!

Perhaps you’ve read through this entire guide, only to find that you’re still not sure where to find the best lipstick for your skintone, or maybe you don’t care for the options recommended for you.

Maybe you’re warm-toned, but you can’t stand peachy corals. Or perhaps you’re cool-toned and crave a purple lipstick.

Whatever your reason, we’ve got you covered, with our neutral-toned lipsticks! These universal shades look great on everyone, whether you’re cooler than cool, or so warm you’re hot.

Here are some of our best-selling neutral shades:

Neutral Berry
Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in Protea

Neutral Nude
Fruit Pigmented® Pomegranate Oil Anti-Aging Lipstick in Clover

Neutral Deep Ruby
Fruit Pigmented® Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in Nopal