Fifty shades of white: The best wedding dress shades to match your skin tone

If you're taking the classic route for your wedding dress, there isn’t much to choose in terms of colour. White is white...Or is it?

By Fionn Lee - 2 Mar 2018

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Colours exist on a spectrum from ‘cool’ to ‘warm’, and if you’re not quite sure what that means, it might be time to hit up some primary school art classes. (We kid! But a colour wheel does help to visualise colours better.)

Red, orange and yellow are considered ‘warm’ while blue, green and purple are ‘cool’ tones but each can also have warm or cool variants. For example, there's cool red which is more pink, and warm red, which appears more orange. Likewise, our skin tones come various colours that are affected by underlying pigments called undertones. These can be broadly divided into four groups.

Text: Fionn Lee. Additional Reporting: Michelle Lee

Warm undertones

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Do you get compliments when you wear gold or sunny hues? Do your veins show more green than blue? You might be warm-toned. People with warm undertones tend to look great in matching colours, and can look super vibrant with orangey-red or coral shades. Go for creamier shades of white, or try on a couple of champagne-coloured numbers. Don’t forget to accessorise with a choice gleam of gold!

Denise Keller's Monique Lhuillier gown didn't just go with her cream, peach and gold-themed Bali wedding, it had her positively glowing, too!

Cool undertones

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If the litmus test for warm skin is gold, then silver is it for cool-toned skin. Cool-toned folks stand out best with frosty hues, from deep blues to lilacs and silver accents. While warmer tones can dress it up with more firey shades, cooler skin tones need no help to bring out the snow queen in them.

Silver details with a pristine white further enhance Fan Bing Bing's porcelain skin. Image: bingbing_fan/Instagram

Cool undertones

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Classic stark white is a great option for the cool crowd, but don’t hesitate to stray some to try on silvery whites, or pale amethyst designs.

Song Hyo Kyo's porcelain complexion witih cool undertones is great with stark white and a blue-toned red lipstick. See how you can get her dewy complexion, here.

Image: @kyo1122/Instagram

Neutral undertones

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You lucky duck, you! Being neutral means you don’t have to consider colours the way other skin tones do, because you'll probably look great in any of them. Gold or silver, ivory or Alice blue, the world is your oyster!

Miranda Kerr looks ravishing in gold and coral, as she does in white and silver. For her wedding, she rocked a Dior number in ivory, which is generally flattering on most skin tones.

Images: @mirandakerr/Instagram

Neutral undertones

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It’s easy to arrange your look or even contrast hues to achieve interesting effects. The downside? It can be easy to get stuck with decision paralysis, so don’t get too tied down with all the ifs and hows.

If you have neutral undertones like Jesseca Liu, wedding white or a champagne-tinged gown would suit you. Check out the wedding portraits we shot with her and husband Jeremy Chan in Bhutan!

Images: Her World Brides

Olive undertones

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Contrary to popular opinion, olive skin isn’t just limited to the Mediterranean or any particular ethnicity. Rather, it indicates some green mixed into your undertones. It’s harder to distinguish this from neutral tones, but some olive toned people can feel that they don’t look better in either warm or cool tones. Instead they tend to prefer strange sets of colours that don’t make sense together until they’re paired with olive skin. (And then they look ah-mazing.)

With white dresses, try on varying shades of off-white to find one that flatters you best.

Milas Kunis rocks an off-white dress.

Image: @milakunis/Instagram

Olivia Culpo

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When it comes to your evening look, based on your shade of oliveness, you'll have to experiment more when choosing colours. Natural and earth tones like brick reds, olive green, brown and coral would complement you but eschew grey, navy, purple or taupe, which might make you look sallow.

Model and actress Olivia Culpo pulls off a brick red eyeshadow for the Golden Globes; a deep coral lends a honeyed glow to her skin.

Images: @oliviaculpo/Instagram

Mutedness

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Muted skin is not an undertone per se, but it indicates the level of grey that your skin may have. It's often connected to olive skin tones, as the green may appear greyish.

People with more muted skintones usually look better in shades like dusty mauve or golden green, and may look grey-faced in say, royal purple. When looking for a dress, you (regardless of the warmth or coolness of your undertones) may want to follow the guidelines for olive skintones.

A low saturation shade like a dusty turquoise will suit you better if you have a more muted skin tone like Tang Wei.

Images: @tangwei11/Instagram

But don't sweat it

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If your heart is really set on a certain dress though, don’t panic if it’s not in your colour!

Guides like these are just that- a guide, and not a handbook etched in stone. The interplay of colours between dress and skin can always be amplified or offset by makeup and accessories. And hey, sometimes you may even want the colours to clash a little to make a statement.

Just know that if all else fails, Photoshop is amazing at colour correction.