Finding Your Foundation Shade and Undertone

Merle Norman describes undertone as the color that shows through the surface color of your skin. Your surface tone changes with sun exposure. Your undertone does not — which is why matching to it gives you a shade that still works in December.

Cool (C) — pink, red or bluish. Warm (W) — yellow, peachy or golden. Neutral (N) — a combination of both.

Look at the veins on the inside of your wrist in natural light. Blue suggests cool, green suggests warm, and a mix suggests neutral.

Whichever metal makes your skin look brighter. Silver flatters cool undertones, gold flatters warm, and if both look good on you, you are likely neutral.

This one is easy to try here in the store, since we have plenty of both.

Merle Norman's third test. If you rarely tan, you are likely cool. If you tan easily, warm. If you tan slowly, neutral.

The fourth test. Cool undertones tend to suit blue, green, purple and magenta. Warm undertones suit yellow, orange, brown and red. Neutral undertones suit most of them, which is its own kind of clue.

That usually points to neutral, and it is exactly the case where a Foundation Check in the studio settles it faster than more guessing. Give us a call at 830-693-7573.

Twelve. They cover powder, liquid, cream, cream-to-powder, compact, tinted moisturizer and mineral formats, with shade ranges from five up to twenty-eight depending on the product.

The widest shade ranges are in Ultra Powder Foundation (28 shades) and Powder Base Foundation (23).

Merle Norman's own guidance: cream foundations give buildable coverage with a dewy finish and suit dry skin; powder formulas work best for oily skin; liquids suit most skin types.

Sheer, light, medium, full and buildable. Worth deciding before shade, because the same undertone in a sheer versus a full-coverage formula looks quite different on.

Dewy, luminous, satin, semi-matte and matte.

Several do. Lasting Foundation is SPF 12, Flawless Effect and Sheer Defense Tinted Moisturizer are SPF 15, Expert Finish and Perfecting Makeup are SPF 25, and Timeless Illuminating Makeup and CC Cream are SPF 30.

Yes. Merle Norman calls it a Foundation Check — a studio service where someone helps you land on the right shade, formula and finish together rather than one at a time.

Call us at 830-693-7573 to ask about availability.

That is the whole idea behind Merle Norman. Their own words: they encourage you to visit a studio where you can sample any of their products. Come try it in real light on your own face.

No, deliberately. Prices change and each studio is independently owned, so anything we published here would go stale. Call us at 830-693-7573 and we will tell you exactly what something costs today.