How to find a foundation color that suits my skin tone? Notably, still an issue for beauty beginners and veterans alike, especially when a brand came up with a new foundation range. However, I noticed that some have less of this issue than others, and so I embarked on a quest to find some sort of pattern or a sense of justification. Is a foundation range as diverse and inclusive as it claimed? Do you have a good chance of finding it for your skin tone?
The Background
I would like to find an overview of the foundation range colors and compare them to an actual range of human skin tones. Would there be proof or perhaps a sense of justification, whether a foundation range is inclusive? Being a woman of color, I have heard the phrase “Sorry, we don’t have your skin tone.” more times than I need to. There are stories of complaints that even though there are 40 shades in the foundation range, only very few caters towards a certain skin tone.
There are two projects that I know of which could represent the actual range of human skin tones: the humanae project, and Pantone Skin Tone palette. I chose the Pantone Skin Tone because it claimed to represent the whole range of human skin tone and it has 110 different shades.
The Method
To start with, I did some simplifications:
- The color used for comparison is taken from the website swatch, and it doesn’t take into account the coverage of the foundation, possible oxidation, and how does it actually swatch on the skin.
- The colors are converted into a luminance value, which is described as how human eyes perceived how light/dark a color is. Luminance value is between 0 (dark) and 1 (light. It is a generalized approach, but it is a good enough start for now, as it made the spectrum and range comparison so much better.
- Luminance conversion means I do not calculate the warm/cool tone of the foundation shade (yet). I hope to achieve this in the next iteration of this project because I know how important that is for foundation matching.
The Basis: Pantone Skin Tone Chart
Pantone skin color chart ranges from the darkest 2R15 (l =0.2713) to the lightest 4Y01 (l = 0.6978). This is the Pantone chart from 0 to 1, and each circle represents the color of the skin tone.
Zooming into the chart, we can see there are more colors representing the light-medium spectrum has more variations than the darker spectrum. I don’t have enough data to tell if this is a good representation or not, so until then, let’s just view this as one perspective.
The Foundation Ranges
Initially, I would like to have a mix of representation of foundation ranges that has a good reputation for diversity and inclusivity, more classic beauty brands, and brands that are currently hyped. If you would like to get yours added, let me know in the comment, and I might add it to the next series.
MAC Studio Fix Fluid Foundation
MAC is one of the forefronts of diverse foundation range, way before it was hip, and this particular type has 43 shades (and more to add soon).
Unfortunately, the current shade mix mostly catered to the light-medium tone, some medium-dark tone, but only one in the dark shade and only two in the fair shade.
Fenty Beauty Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Longwear Foundation
Fenty Beauty claimed to have come up with the most inclusive skin tone range. It has 40 shades.
And yes, it does look like it is almost equally divided across the range! We might have a real winner here.
Kylie Cosmetics Skin Concealer
One of the most current hyped brands is Kylie Cosmetics. They don’t have a foundation per se, but it has something called Skin Concealer. It has a mere 30 shades, but it seemed to cover the lightest and the darkest.
Unfortunately, it seemed to be severely lacking for the medium-dark skin tones.
Chanel Les Beiges Touche de Teint Belle Mine SPF 25 / PA++
I always thought Chanel never carries my shade. As it turned out, their new line seemed to have expanded a little bit, although still nothing for the darker skin tone.
My skin tone is around the 0.6 – 0.65 luminance, which means I actually only have one option with the Les Beiges Touche de Teint Belle Mine line – it’s the cushion foundation. Tough luck when the shade turned out to be too beige/too yellow.
BeautyBlender Bounce Liquid Whip Long Wear Foundation
Beautyblender got a lot of heat for not being inclusive for some skin tone range. The carry 32 shades.
And most of it is in the light spectrum. They have a long range of color, but not many in the dark and medium-dark range!
Nivea Hyaluron Cellular 3in1 Pflege Cushion
I had to do this last minute, after viewing some advertisement for it. This is the kind of foundation range that exists in German drugstores. I admit this particular one is rather extreme with only three shades, but the shades are named light, medium, dark.
It doesn’t even get to the medium skin tone! They really need to do better!
Combined Foundation Range Graph
When the charts are combined, we can see the differences in color representation.
There might be another issue with the Pantone Skin Tone as a base. The color seemed to look more neutral than the foundation shades. From the luminance perspective, yellow leans towards more light, so the whole representation is skewed towards lower luminance value.
Next Steps
I am eager to get more foundation ranges represented in the project and if there is a better model to represent it. In the meantime, it is good to know that I am not completely delusional in thinking that some brands just cater more towards a certain range of skin tones!
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