how to choose the best foundation for your skin tone

Estée Lauder offers an iMatch service, where a digital machine not only reveals your perfect Double Wear shade, but you'll also be able to identify your perfect formula (or formulas if you wear a foundation wardrobe, like us).

Visiting a makeup counter takes all of the guess work out of it.

Remember, foundation shouldn't show on your skin - you want your complexion to appear amazing, not your foundation. Test three swatches of the foundation you think best suit you for comparision on your jawline, and go with the closest match that appears to disappear into the skin. Your skin tone will also vary in different areas of your face, so decide whether you want to match your foundation to where the sun hits your skin (such as the nose and forehead), or your base colour. You want to match your foundation to the colour your skin most often is, so if you regularly self-tan, take this into account and don't shop for your shade on an unusually pale day. Nowadays many of us aren't always our true base colour. If it's a combination of the two – or you simply can't identify it as one of the other – you have a neutral undertone.

If it's rosy you probably have a cool undertone, if it's golden you probably have a warm undertone. Look at your bare skin and think about how rosy (pink toned) or golden (yellow toned) it is. If you're unsure try comparing your skin colour to a celebrity, model or makeup artist with a quick Google search and see how they describe theirs. How do you compare? 2. It can be bang on medium, but more likely it will be on the scale in between either very light, light, light-medium, medium-deep, deep or very deep. Your skin intensity is how light or deep it is. Think about the intensity of your skin colour With products like Estée Lauder's Double Wear Stay-in-Place Makeup (the UK's no.1 foundation*) now boasting a mega 44 shades to choose from, there's been no better time to pinpoint your spot-on shade. Whether a workday or weekend, when you find the right colour foundation you can change the finish to suit your mood. Some days we want a lightweight luminous finish, while on others we want full coverage foundation.

How to choose the best foundation for your skin tone