A lot of people have asked me how to tell what undertones a colour contains. To be perfectly honest, there's no mathematical way to determine what undertone a lipstick's colour contains - you just have to look at it and try to determine which way the colour pulls.

In today's post, I've put together a few lipsticks to show you how to determine when a red lipstick pulls orange - which basically means that it has an orange undertone. In some lipsticks, the colour is quite strong and therefore the lipstick looks strongly orange, but in some, the orange undertone is very slight, but these colours flatter warm and olive skin tones immensely.

This first lipstick is the CoverGirl Blast Flipstick in the number 840, 'Stunner'.

This lipstick barely makes it into the 'red' category, because of its obvious, strong orange pull. In a lipstick like this, it is easy to tell that this colour flatters warm and olive skin tones beautifully. It would also flatter extremely fair skin tones with auburn/orange hair tones.

In case you're interested in this beautiful orange lipstick, it is sold in a duo, with one matte side (pictured above), and a beautiful shimmer side as well, which you can layer on top of the original colour, to create more depth and fullness to the lip (pictured below). It is a little bit dry on the lips, but lasts all day with minimal fading.


In this next lipstick, the orange undertones are a lot less obvious, so the lipstick looks a bit redder than the CoverGirl lipstick above. If you look closely, however, you can still see the orange undertones in the colour.
A way I find quite easy to determine the undertones in a colour, is to imagine a true red paint blob, and try to imagine what colour you would add into that colour to turn it into the lipstick colour that you see.

This lipstick colour is L'Oreal Shine Caresse in #300 'Juliet'. The L'Oreal Shine Caresse lip stains are long-lasting, and feel quite light on the lips. The feel of them on the lips is unlike any other lip product I've tried - they feel very light and yet have a bit of tackiness to them. Though they dry up a little, they still manage to give your lips a little bit of slip so that when you rub your lips together, you don't feel that uncomfortable, overly matte dryness.
They do stain the lips quite a bit, and last forever, even through eating and drinking. Most of the lip stains in this range are extremely sheer, with the #300 being one of the few exceptions. In the picture below, I layered the lip stain on twice to achieve this opacity.


Finally, to help you see what a red lipstick with an orange undertone looks like compared to another colour, below I've attached a beautiful true red lipstick with a slightly bluish undertone. You can hardly see any orange in this lipstick colour, and you might be able to see the difference this colour makes to my skin. In the above pictures, when I wear an orange lipstick, my skin tone looks warm and orangey. In the picture below, my skin looks a lot pinker, and paler.

This gorgeous lip colour is an Australis Pout Paste. These are a very thick gloss/lipstick hybrid, and are intensely pigmented and feel like a thick lipgloss on the lips. They do dry down to a stain after a few hours, and don't dry the lips out very much. When I say pigmented, I do mean pigmented! The picture below shows my lips only after one swipe of the doe-foot applicator that comes with this tube, and it stays that way for hours.


I hope you found this post helpful, and if you have a warm skin tone, you might want to check these lipsticks out!