Anyone with South Asian skin tone want to share their makeup recommendations with me? I'm useless

[buzzheath]

I get the colours all wrong. I don't know how to pick the right shade for my skin. I'm a mess. Please help! My skin colour is probably similar, maybe just a tad lighter, than say, Parminder Nagra, Jameela Jamil etc. I don't know if my undertones are warm or cool. My blush and concealer and foundation look terrible and are all wrong.

Can anyone recommend any products, and tell me specifically which shade to get?! I could go to one of those counters but I always feel so hopeless

Go to Bobbie Brown. They specialise in non-white skin, and have a really decent range of shades..I use a laura Mercier foundation, but it took a LOT of trial and error. I am cool-toned but with brown skin, which doesn't make sense at first.

When you say "go there", can you just, like, walk into a makeup store and ask them to sort you out? If you know nothing at all?

Milani shade range is great for Indian skin tones, and affordable/good quality. Peachy/deep pink or purple pink and coral pink look great. Light or medium pinks wouldn’t work. Supergoop glow screen SPF in the shade that’s a bit dark (think it’s called sunset) would look like ‘my skin but better’. Do you have hyperpigmentation?

Sorry, what do you mean? Peachy/deep pink for what? Blush? Foundation?

Two brands that are good are Mac and bare minerals. I like bare minerals tinted moisturizer for the day and if going to a party/event Mac foundation. I also find a makeup brush works better than the sponges.

I did bare minerals online but would deffo recommend going into store and speaking with the makeup artist there.

Also good moisturising underneath.

Do you live in the UK? You could go into Boots or into a shop like John Lewis, and ask the women on the makeup counters. When the other poster talked about peach and pink, she's talking about blush. Very few people would wear peach colour or pink foundation.

Dewy means having a bit of a glow, like you've drunk loads of water for a week and gone for an energetic walk. Matte is, well, matte. Its a flatter, less light-reflecting appearance. Its entirely personal choice which you prefer.

Don't think you have to have every bit of makeup product known to woman immediately. If you've never worn makeup, a full face will feel weird. You could start with a tinted moisturiser, which is like a very very light foundation. Some people use one of those teardrop shaped beauty blender sponges to put it on, I just use my fingers.

I like dior backstage because it has olive shades (think slightly green undertones).

I am white but my DD is not. When she is old enough to want makeup my plan is to treat her to a lesson at a makeup counter, or ask a friend (but my friends who are brown are impossibly old MUM friends ewww).

I would highly recommend you go to Bobbi Brown. You can book make up appointments if you want your whole face done or if you just want advice on something specific then you can just rock up and hope they have someone free to help. Are you in London? If so I would recommend you make an appointment at the Selfridges Bobbi brown counter. You can do it through their instagram. I have done make up tutorials with them and John Lewis and I much prefer Selfridges.

OK, from what's online, Parminder Nagra has pink undertones to her skin, so she's got cool colouring - blue and pink clothes would look lovely and there are on searching a lot of photos with her wearing blue.

Jameelia Jamil, however, appears to have warm colouring - she looks to have golden undertones, so yellow, orange suit her and, again, a search shows her wearing these colours very frequently.

What you're talking about being similar is the intensity/the shade - how dark or light. If you look at photos of either taken at different times of the year, the undertone doesn't change but the intensity varies (and you do need to bear in mind lighting, makeup and photoshop for some images).

The thing frequently used is to look at the colour of the veins in your arms - mine are clearly blue, whereas DP's are greeny-blue. If it's an 'I don't know', it's more likely to be green, as blue is very, very clear - the difference is because a warm yellow tone in the skin over the top is mixing yellow with blue = green.

What exactly does the wrong concealer look like on you - is it a yellow/orange splat like Marge Simpson/Donald Trump or is it more like you've been painting a ceiling white and dripped some on your face?

The Simpsons/Trump look means you're cool/pink/blue but applying warm in error, the painting the hallway look means you're warm/golden/yellow but applied cool.

And if they all look equally weird, you've got something too dark or too light - and may have a more neutral undertone, so something more Painting the Ceiling looks just as wrong as something more Simpsons.

It is absolutely normal to go to a makeup counter and ask for help finding the correct foundation and concealer colours.

I love the dewy look but have no idea which products people use to achieve this!

This is helpful! I've just looked at my veins and couldn't initially tell whether more green or more blue. I guess they're a kind of greeny blue, so I'll go with green? So wait. It's green. What does this mean in terms of what I should do? Does a green undertone imply I should use certain shades etc?

The wrong colour concealer - I think it's too late - looks grey and ashy on me.

Try Il Makiage. They do very good online colour matching consultation and their foundation is not too heavy, unlike Bobbi Brown and Mac.

You could also try a tinted moisturiser, especially for summer. Unless you have particulary bad skin, South Asian complexions don't tend to need heavy foundation. Fenty and Sculpted by Aimee are particularly good. You can go into Boots or a dept store and try the testers there.

I second the recommendation to go to a Bobbi Brown or MAC shop or counter at a dept store. They will be able to try different shades on you. If you want to go for a lighter foundation (I mean thickness/texture not skin tone) or a slightly cheaper option, large Boots stores with a Boots No7 counter will also do a colour matching service to get the right colour(s) for you. I use a No7 foundation for everyday and MAC when I need more heavy duty coverage. The other great thing with MAC is you can get concealer and undereye concealer in the same shades as the foundation.

MAC blushers, bronzers etc are more expensive than high street brands but I find they are much more intensely pigmented and so I need to use less product and it lasts much longer on my face. The only MAC product I avoid are mascaras - they are too thick, so make my lashes look clumpy.

I reckon you've got golden/yellow undertones, which makes you warm toned.

As a general rule of thumb, you're avoiding baby pink, baby blue, grey, sage, aqua, pure white and any colours you'd associate with Frozen or Snow White (sorry if you're not around cartoons, but they have very clear colour schemes, so I find them a useful shorthand - I'll also chuck in some food and plants, etc, for examples).

But colours like honey, scarlet, fuschia pink, cream, marigold yellow or orange, nasturtium colours, dragonfruit pink or colours in the original Winnie the Pooh animations (except Piglet) - so Tigger orange, Rabbit yellow, the golden brown of leaves - would work better - as would Marge Simpson's dress green, her hair colour blue, Lisa's dress/Bart's shorts...

For blush, carry on in a similar way - let the Frozen colours go and aim for something that is more like fuchsia pink or even Vimto colour applied very lightly. If it's too bright for you, you can scale back to a paler version of the same colours. For eyes, you have so many choices, including some absolutely gorgeous iridescent dragonfly blues, turmeric yellow, chilli red, emerald greens, gold...

Do you get your brows done at all? I've had mine threaded for years and the ladies there are always very helpful with picking things out that would suit - maybe that would be more comfortable for you than going to a makeup counter at first (although like I said, it's a very normal thing to ask for help choosing the right shade of foundation/concealer/blush).

I hope some of my rambling helps!