It’s a common enough story among lipstick addicts: you’ll be out shopping and your eye falls on The 1. The perfect shade, the colour you’ve been searching for, the lipstick that will bring the Instagram likes flooding in.
You rush home, rip off the packaging and put it on. And all of a sudden it looks very familiar – yep, it’s exactly the same as the 5 shades in your make-up case that you already use again and again.
And yet, finding the perfect, new colour is easy if you follow these simple tips.
Figure out your skin tone
The lip colour that suits you best will have a lot to do with your colouring and your skin tone, so first of all you should work out whether your skin is warm or cool.
While cool skin tends to be fair, medium and dark skins can also have the same blueish undertones or tendency to pinkness. On the other hand, warm skins have yellow undertones – olive complexions are very obviously warm.
A good test is to look at the inside of your arm at your veins. If they’re blue, you’re cool. Green? Warm. You may see a mix, in which case you’re more neutral.
Also try holding up gold and silver jewellery to your face, and see which one (personal preference aside) suits you better. Gold = warm; silver = cool.
Pick your lipstick
Now it’s time to pick your lipstick. Generally speaking, warmer skin tones should go for the warmer lipsticks in orangey-red and bronze colours, while cooler skins should look at the blueish-red and pink end of the spectrum.
To translate that into real colours, check out our guide to every shade of Rimmel London’s revolutionary new The Only 1 Lipstick.
Call Me Crazy is the perfect example of a lovely orange red, while Listen Up! is a fantastic bluey pink.
Match your complexion
You can also choose your lipstick based on how dark your complexion is. Dark skins can get away with deep plums and berry colours, like Oh-So-Wicked, whereas paler colours might look too chalky.
Fair skin looks great with bold, bright reds, like Best of the Best – but they should avoid anything too pale that washes them out.
Olive skins are lucky in that most colours suit them, so go for something punchy like Revolution Red.
What’s your signature Rimmel London shade? Like and share this post - then let us know using the hashtag #ALipstickRevolution...
