Picking a lipstick shade, and why most shade charts overpromise

Where undertone genuinely matters

Most lipstick advice implies every shade is a precision decision. In practice, undertone is decisive at the extremes and close to irrelevant in the middle.

The two places it genuinely matters are true reds and bright corals. A blue-based red on warm skin can read purple; an orange-based red on cool skin can read brassy. Both are visible from across a room, which is why reds have a reputation for being difficult.

The middle of the range — nudes, roses, berries, most pinks — is far more tolerant. This is why someone can wear a shade that a chart says is wrong for them and look completely fine. The chart was describing a tendency and reporting it as a rule.

Finding a nude that is not the wrong nude

Nude is the shade people get wrong most often, and it is because nude is not a colour. It is a relationship: a shade slightly different from your own lip.

A nude lighter than your lip reads as concealer and flattens the face. A nude that matches exactly erases the lip. The version that works for most people is roughly one step deeper than their natural lip colour, with the undertone matched.

This is why a nude that looks perfect on someone else can look strange on you even at the same skin depth — you have different natural lip colours, and nude is measured from the lip rather than from the face.

• •Warm skin: nudes with peach, caramel or golden in them.
• •Cool skin: nudes with rose, mauve or a hint of pink.
• •Olive skin: brown-based or terracotta nudes; pink nudes often go ashy.
• •Deeper skin: the same rule applies and the shade names mislead badly — a shade sold as nude is usually formulated against fair skin, so look for the relationship rather than the word.

Finish changes the colour more than you expect

The same pigment behaves like a different shade depending on finish, and this accounts for a lot of the results people find confusing.

Matte reads deeper and more saturated. A red that looked wearable in the tube reads considerably stronger as a matte. Matte also settles into lip texture, which is a comfort question as much as a colour one.

Satin and cream sit in the middle and are the most forgiving, because a little shine breaks up the colour and softens whatever the undertone is doing.

Gloss and sheer read one to two shades lighter than they appear. This is genuinely useful: a shade that feels too bold as a matte is often exactly right as a sheer, and that is a cheaper solution than buying a different colour.

Testing without buying

Two things make in-store testing more reliable than it usually is.

Test on your lip, not your hand. The back of the hand is a completely different colour from the lip and its undertone often differs from the face — it is a convenient surface and a poor prediction. If a tester cannot go on the lip, the inside of the fingertip is closer than the back of the hand.

Then walk to a window. Shop lighting is designed to sell the product and is usually warmer and brighter than anywhere you will actually wear it. Any shade decision made under retail lighting is a decision about how the shade looks in that shop.