Am I warm or cool toned?The home tests, and what they miss.
If you have tried the vein test and the jewellery test and got two different answers, nothing is wrong with you. Both tests are real, both are read in the wrong light most of the time, and neither of them answers the question you actually have, which is what to wear.
Below: the three tests done properly, the daylight comparison that settles it, and an honest answer about paying a person $300 to tell you.
The three home tests, done properly
Inside the wrist, in daylight, at a window, with no lamp on. Green or olive suggests warm, blue or purple suggests cool. It fails on deeper skin and on anyone whose veins simply do not show, which is a large share of people.
A gold chain and a silver chain against bare skin at the collarbone, again in daylight, one after the other in a mirror. Watch your face, not the metal: one of them makes your skin look even, the other puts a grey or a pink cast under your jaw.
Hold a sheet of plain white paper under your chin in daylight. Against true white, warm skin reads yellow, peach or golden, and cool skin reads pink, rosy or faintly blue.
Three rules make all three of them work: daylight only, no makeup, and hair pushed back. Indoor bulbs run warm, so a lamp hands you a warm answer no matter who you are.
Why they disagree
Four reasons, in the order they cause trouble. Light: a warm bulb or a bright screen shifts everything. Season: a tan reads warmer than your winter skin. Hair: dye changes what your face is being compared against. And neutral undertone, which is genuinely common — if the tests split two to one, that split is your answer.
Neutral does not mean you can wear everything. It means the temperature is not what limits you, and the depth and clarity of a colour matter more than whether it leans gold or blue.
The comparison that settles it
Undertone is easiest to see as a difference, not as a verdict. So find two garments you already own in the same colour family, one warm version and one cool: cream against pure white, camel against grey, rust against burgundy, olive against navy.
Stand at a window with no makeup and your hair back. Hold each one under your chin for ten seconds and photograph yourself both times, same spot, same light. Then look at the two pictures side by side on a screen.
Look at your under-eye shadow, the skin either side of your mouth, and the evenness of your jaw. One picture makes those quieter. That garment is your temperature, and it will beat any quiz you take.
What undertone decides, and what it does not
Undertone chooses the version of a colour: warm red or blue red, ivory or optic white, olive or emerald. That is worth knowing, and it is roughly a fifth of the useful answer.
The rest is contrast, depth and scale. Contrast is how far apart your hair, skin and eyes sit — it decides whether an outfit can be two sharply separated tones or wants to stay in one family. Depth decides how dark a colour can go before it wears you. Scale decides how big a print or a collar can be.
None of that is temperature. It is why a palette alone leaves you standing in a shop holding the right colour in the wrong garment.
Seasons, and why we do not use them
The four-season and twelve-season systems sort people by temperature, value and clarity, and they are a reasonable shorthand. Two things keep us out of them.
They stop at colour, so they say nothing about necklines, lengths or hair. And two analysts routinely give the same woman two different seasons, which is what makes the whole exercise feel arbitrary from the outside.
We wrote our own grid instead: twelve appearances, each read from bone structure, features, proportion, contrast and colouring, and each carrying six rules — colours, necklines, cuts, lengths, hair, makeup. You can read all twelve on the Types page without giving us anything.
Is paid colour analysis worth it?
Sometimes, and here is the straight version. In person it runs about $300 to $500 in the United States, and from $80 for a photo-based one. What you are buying is an hour of a trained eye, real drapes against your skin, and a person answering your follow-up questions.
It is worth it if you are about to spend heavily — a new wardrobe after a body change, a job that needs one — and you want the temperature settled by someone who does it daily. It is worth less if you leave with a fan of swatches and no idea which cut of trouser to buy, which is the common complaint.
Where a person still beats us: they see you in the room, in real fabric, in changing light, and they can react to your face falling when you dislike something. We work from photographs and we say so.
Where we win: $39 instead of $300, tonight instead of next month, and a picture of you in the finished look rather than a palette to interpret. MyLook is built and run by AI agents on NanoCorp, and that price is the one our checkout charges today.
Or let one photograph answer it.
A Reading reads your undertone, your contrast and your bone structure together, names your Type, and shows you wearing the colours it calls for — in your own photograph. About a minute.
Your first three Looks are free. No card, and no account before you have seen them.
The other half of the question: what haircut suits my face. Or read the twelve Types, each with its own colours in view.