Personal color FAQ

Personal color is the set of colors that suit your natural coloring: your skin's undertone and how light or deep your skin, hair and eyes are. Colors in your range make skin look clear and even; colors outside it can make it look sallow, gray or tired.

It is hugely popular in Korea, where people choose foundation, lip and blush shades by their season, and Korean brands label base makeup by undertone for the same reason.

Korean personal color sorts coloring into four seasons using two questions: is your undertone warm or cool, and is your coloring light or deep? Warm and light is Spring Warm, cool and light is Summer Cool, warm and deep is Autumn Warm, and cool and deep is Winter Cool.

Consultants often split each season further, into types like Light, Bright, Mute or Dark, but the four seasons decide most shade choices.

Look at the veins on your wrist in daylight: green suggests warm, blue or purple suggests cool. Gold jewelry flattering you more than silver points warm, and the reverse points cool. Skin that tans easily tends warm; skin that burns and turns pink tends cool. Cream and ivory suiting you better than crisp pure white also points warm.

If the signs disagree you may be close to neutral, which is common. Our questionnaire asks these same questions, and the photo test measures undertone directly.

You take or upload one photo. Your browser finds your face and measures the color of your skin, hair and eyes, using the whites of your eyes as a neutral reference to correct for the lighting. Those measurements are scored on two separate axes, undertone (warm to cool) and depth (light to deep), and the two together give your season.

You get your season with its palette as hex swatches, colors to avoid, makeup tips, matching Korean cushion shade codes and K-beauty picks in the shade that suits you.

Yes. The photo test and the six-question questionnaire are both free, and neither needs an account.

Lighting matters most. Face a window in daylight, turn off filters and beauty modes, and keep your hair in frame. Colored or very warm indoor light shifts how skin reads, and the test reports lower confidence when it detects that, instead of guessing silently.

A photo usually pins down depth well, while undertone can be close to the line. That is why the result shows a confidence for each axis and flags a neutral undertone when it finds one. An in-person draping session is still the most thorough way to confirm a season.

Your photo is never shared with any third party and is never shown publicly unless you choose to include it in a share link. We keep the photo and its result for up to 365 days to provide and improve the analysis, and then it is deleted automatically.

If you would rather not use a photo, the questionnaire gives you a season without one. The photo test is for people aged 14 and over.

The number is the depth, and lower is lighter: 13 and 17 are very fair, 21 is fair to light, 23 is light to medium and 25 is medium. The letter is the undertone: C is cool and pink-toned (Summer and Winter), N is neutral beige, and W is warm and yellow-golden (Spring and Autumn).

So 21C is a fair, cool shade and 23N a light-medium neutral one. Ranges thin out past 25, so deeper skin tones often mix two shades.

Only a few idols have had a personal color diagnosis on camera, and those are the ones we list: aespa's Winter (Spring Warm Light), Red Velvet's Seulgi (Summer Cool Bright), BLACKPINK's Jisoo (Winter Cool Dark), MAMAMOO's Wheein (Winter Cool Dark). Each was diagnosed by a consultant on the idol's own YouTube channel.

Lists that assign a season to every idol are fan guesses from photos, which stage lighting and makeup make unreliable.

Your undertone stays the same, but your depth can shift a little with a tan, and dyed hair changes which colors look best next to your face. Many people go one cushion shade deeper in summer, for example from 21 to 23.