The Olive Undertone Guide: What It Is and How to Dress It

Undertone Guides  ·  6 min read

Olive undertone is the undertone category that gets the least attention in mainstream beauty advice and the most frustration from the women who have it. Most foundation ranges do not cater to it well. Most color advice lumps it in with warm undertone when it behaves quite differently. This guide addresses olive undertone specifically and practically.

What Makes Olive Undertone Different

Warm undertone has a golden or peachy quality. Olive undertone has a yellow-green or grey quality. These sound similar but behave very differently with colors and makeup. Colors that look vibrant on warm undertone can look clashing or overwhelming on olive. Colors that look clean on cool undertone can make olive skin look grey. Olive undertone sits in its own category that needs its own approach.

The most reliable identifier of olive undertone is what happens to the skin in the sun. Warm undertones tan to a golden color. Olive undertones tan but the tan has a grey-green or khaki quality rather than a clean golden one. Another reliable indicator is that green veins with a muddy or grey cast on the inner wrist, rather than a clear green, point toward olive rather than warm.

Foundation for Olive Skin

This is where olive undertone creates the most practical challenges. Most foundation ranges are formulated for warm, cool and neutral skin. Olive skin often falls between warm and neutral and can look grey in cool shades and slightly orange in very warm ones. The approach that works best for most olive-toned women is to start with a neutral or warm-neutral shade and test it thoroughly in natural daylight.

Many professional makeup artists mix a warm-neutral foundation with a small amount of yellow color-correcting primer for olive clients. The yellow primer counteracts the grey quality that many foundations create on olive skin. This technique works at any price point. A drop of yellow primer mixed into foundation before application can transform the result from grey and flat to natural and skin-like.

Clothing Colors for Olive Undertone

Olive undertone is most flattered by earthy muted tones that have some warmth without being vivid. The color families that consistently work well are: earthy greens like olive, khaki and forest green, warm terracotta and rust, camel and warm brown, warm taupe and mushroom, muted gold and bronze, and rich warm burgundy. These colors harmonize with the yellow-green quality of olive skin rather than fighting it.

Very vivid bright colors can be challenging for olive undertones because the saturation can create a clash with the more muted quality of olive skin. Muted versions of any color work better than vivid versions. Very cool icy colors can make olive skin look grey. Within the cool family, muted cool tones like dusty teal or soft sage work better than bright cool ones.

Hair Color for Olive Undertone

Hair color is an area where olive undertone is often poorly served by generic advice. The advice to go warm or golden does not fully apply because very golden hair can look jarring against the grey-green quality of olive skin. The sweet spot for most olive-toned women is a warm ash tone: a hair color that has some warmth but is not purely golden. Medium brown with warm tones, soft auburn and warm dark brown all tend to look harmonious.

Very cool ash or platinum hair can make olive skin look grey and unwell because the grey quality in both the hair and the skin reinforces itself. Very vivid golden blonde can look clashing for the same reason that very warm colors in clothing can clash. The neutral middle ground is almost always the most flattering direction for olive hair color.