Olive Skin Tone Explained: What You Need for Flawless Makeup

Olive skin tone looks quite enigmatic. It may have brown or tan tones with green, yellow or golden undertones. However, these complexions are neither cool nor warm-toned. Instead, they are neutral-toned. This unique skin tone has a magical freshness.

How to master flattering makeup for your olive skin tone? That’s what we are going to discuss today. I will help you pick the shades of foundation, blush, eyeshadow, and lipstick that are true to you. Let’s go!

Meet the expert

Annie Walton Doyle

Expertise: Beauty Expert

Olive skin tones refer to any skin with an undertone of yellow, brown, or even subtle green. It represents the extremely warm end of the skin undertone spectrum. But olive skins aren’t necessarily tan. In fact, olive undertones can be found in all skin shades, from pale to dark.

How Do You Know If You Have Olive Skin?

It is easy to confuse an olive-toned skin with a golden tanned skin. The distinguishing difference is the green tinge that is present in the olive skin tones only. A natural nude is a good place to start when determining which shade of makeup you should use. Below I will list 10 ways to determine what your skin tone is:

• The vein color – Look at the underside of your wrist. If your veins are bluish-purple, you have a cool toned complexion. Veins tinged with green point out you have a warm skin tone. Bluish-green veins indicate a neutral complexion.
• Do you take a tan or burn? – if you take a tan, you’re warm toned; if you burn, you’re cool.
• Do you blush easily? – If you do, then you are cool toned.
• What are your colors? – If you look great with any color on, you’re neutral, but if red and orange are your colors, you are warm. On the other hand, if you look good with purple and green on, you are cool toned.
• White paper test – Place a piece of white paper next to your clean, dry face. If your complexion appears dull, you are warm-toned. If your face looks good, you’re cool toned, but if it looks the same, then you’re neutral.
• Gold or silver Jewelry? – Silver shines on cool toned skin and gold absolutely glows on warm skin tones. If you look great with two-toned jewelry on, then you’re neutral.
• Eye color – light brown, green and hazel eyes are typically warm-toned. Deep brown, black and steel blue eyes are cool toned.

Olive Skin Tone Makeup Tips

If you have olive toned skin, you may find yourself questioning which makeup is for olive skin? There are some cosmetic products that you should steer clear of if you have an olive skin tone. You have to know if you have a warm or a cool skin tone before you find the correct skin color palette to use. There are several makeup tips to help with your color choices.

Skin Care Tips for Olive Skin Tone

First off, let’s not forget that the way your skin looks and feels directly depends on the way you take care of it. What is olive skin? It’s a range of soft, medium brown complexions with yellow, green or golden undertones. Although there are different undertones in olive skin tones, they all require the right approach to the skincare to be on point. Let’s have a look at some do’s and don’ts for your olive complexion to keep it fresh, beautiful and youthful, with and without makeup.

Olive skin DO’s:

• Exfoliate your skin regularly to protect it from darkening in some areas, but make sure to use gentle products that are not too harsh.
• Moisturize your skin with an SPF to deal with dryness in the morning.
• Use niacinamide and retinol-based moisturizing products at night to hydrate your skin and maintain its glow.
• Some gentle depilatory will also be a plus, especially if you deal with unwanted facial hair when applying makeup.

Olive skin Don’ts:

• Don’t use harsh scrubs made of nut shells or fruit pits so as not to scratch and irritate your skin.
• Such chemicals as glycolic acid and SLS are your worst enemies! They can burn your skin and make it more sensitive. Opt for more natural alternatives for your skincare routine.

Useful Tip: Honey is a naturally nourishing and hydrating element that will preserve the shiny glow of your olive skin, make its tone more balanced, reduce redness and improve its elasticity!

The Right Foundation For Your Olive Skin

Meet the expert

Annie Walton Doyle

Expertise: Beauty Expert

Trying to find a foundation or concealer match when you have olive undertones can be tricky, but it is the only way to ensure your makeup looks natural and suits your complexion. Look for brands that cater specifically to olive undertones, or consider getting color-matched by a professional to find your perfect fit.

Although you’re blessed with the skin that has minimal to no redness, and imperfections are less visible on it, it’s still hard to create flawless makeup for olive skin without the perfect base. Thus, choosing the right foundation for olive skin is essential. I recommend the skin-improving foundation SPF25 with hyaluronic acid and niacinamide by KOSAS.

Useful Tips:

• Keep in mind that even olive skin can have cool and warm undertones. So, if the foundation looks too pink or too yellow on you, it’s a telltale sign that you should consider going for the shade with the opposite undertone.
• If you still can’t find your ideal olive skin tone foundation, go for something less heavy, such as a BB or CC cream.

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Choose The Right Concealer For Olive Skin Tone

Although your skin isn’t prone to redness, you can still face some imperfections, such as dark circles under the eyes, hyperpigmentation, post-acne and dark spots. To cover them up, it’s important to use concealer in the right shade. To fight acne marks, hyperpigmentation and dark spots, choose the one that matches your light or dark olive skin. To hide dark circles, go with a tone that is a couple of shades lighter than your natural skin color. On top of that, you can practice multi-concealing with several different shades, depending on the location of the problem.

Blush For Olive Skin Tones

Meet the expert

Annie Walton Doyle

Expertise: Beauty Expert

When looking for bronzers and blushers for olive skin tones, warmer colors tend to look more flattering, Peach or coral blushes and tan bronzers will help accentuate, rather than clash with, your olive tones. Golden highlighting products also tend to look more natural than silver or pinkish tones.

When it comes to the best blush color for olive skin, it would definitely be something peach and rose. These shades look natural and can instantly improve your complexion. You might also want to try out bronzy shades like the Glowgasm Face Palette by Charlotte Tilbury, which will amazingly enhance the warm undertones in your skin. The hues you should stay away from are bright pinks, browns, and oranges, as they may come out too muddy or warm on your olive skin color.

Best Highlighter For Olive Skin Tone

Believe it or not, but the best highlighter for olive skin is rosy-toned. The classic ones with gold tones will either not look distinctive on you, or make you look "washed out", which is not what you’re aiming at, right? On the contrary, Vivian Johnson touches the model's cheekbones with a rosy highlighter, which enhances the beutiful warm undertones in her gorgeous olive skin.

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Brow Makeup For Olive Skin

Despite all the benefits, having golden olive skin has some drawbacks too. Such skin tones can make your brows look washed out. To prevent that, just don’t skip filling them in with brow mascara, pencil or gel. The choice depends on the effect you want to achieve, so it’s better to try all of the options to find out what suits you best.

Mascara For Olive Skin Tone

Well, it’s not hard to guess that regardless of whether you have dark or light olive skin tone, your mascara should also make your eyes pop against it. Thus, there’s no better choice than black or at least deep brown shade. To achieve the ultimate dramatic effect, you can even go for false lashes. Just make sure you have the right size and know how to apply them.

Eyeliner For Olive Skin

When it comes to the best eyeliner for olive-toned skin, it’s better to refrain from any shades apart from black. Save the bright hues like green, blue and purple for a special occasion. No matter whether you have lighter or darker olive skin, your eye color is most likely brown or emerald green. Thus, to amp it up, there’s no better option than this Linda Stephanie's trick with black eyeliner. Alternatively, you can go with brown if you wish, but make sure it’s dark and deep enough.

Eyeshadow For Olive Skin Tone

Meet the expert

Annie Walton Doyle

Expertise: Beauty Expert

In terms of eyes, opting for brown mascaras and liners can help give a more subtle definition that doesn’t look stark or jarring. Bronze and taupe eyeshadows tend to look stunning alongside olive undertones.

Do you find that bight and pastel eyeshadows do no good to your skin? The thing is when it comes to eye makeup, the best colors for olive skin range from nudes to shimmery copper or bronze and deep taupe. However, it doesn’t mean that you should waive every colorful eyeshadow for olive skin. You just need to find the right match for your skin. Instead of bright blue, green and yellow, grab rich navy blue, forest green, teal and golden brown hues. Besides, mauve and dark plum shades are always a sure bet no matter whether you have light olive skin or dark.

Lipstick For Olive-Toned Skin

Meet the expert

Annie Walton Doyle

Expertise: Beauty Expert

For lips, try to also look for brown tones, be it a brick red, a tawny nude, or a vampy berry.

• As for the particular colors of lipstick for olive skin and brown eyes, as well as green ones, I recommend to turn to such shades as nude, brown, berry or red.
• The perfect nude lipstick for olive-tonned skin shouldn’t have pink undertones while gravitating to brown instead.
• If you decide to go for darker colors, you can choose any shade of brown, from caramel to coffee.
• Berry pink lipstick for olive skin features raspberry, plum and claret hues.
• Your ideal red lip color should have yellow and orange undertones instead of blue. In case you prefer bright lip shades, here you have a lot of options as well – orange, peach, coral, rose and magenta shades will look the most complimentary for your skin tone.

Useful Tips:

When picking out the best lipsticks for olive-hued skin, remember to take into account your undertones too. Stick to the warm-toned lip colors that make the green tones in your skin less prominent while enhancing the yellow ones

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Makeup Tutorial For Olive Skin Tone

Do not use foundation for your everyday look due to its heaviness. Use mask instead. Apply the primer and then apply the matte skin tint and stipple it onto your skin using a blender applicator.

Use concealer to cover up any dark areas that remain and blend these areas before proceeding. Use translucent setting powder to go over the areas where the concealer was applied. Lightly dust your desired color of blush onto your cheeks to add a splash of color.

• Apply luminizer all over the face with a brush. For an added highlight, add a little luminizer to the brow bone, cheekbone, and nose for a bit of brightness.
• Next, for the eyeshadow, apply a base color all over the lids before moving to the following shade to accentuate the color in the corners and crease of the eyelid. Concentrate most of this color on the outer corner of the lower eyelid. Proceed on to the eyeliner and apply to the corner of the eye for the cat eye effect and blend slightly with a brush.
• When applying the mascara, apply more to the outer lashes and less to the inner lashes to prevent a caked-up look. Continue to the eyebrows and pencil in any areas that need to be filled in.
• Finally, add light pink gloss to complete the look. Do not overpower your everyday look with bold colors on the lips.

What Hair Color Looks Best With Olive Skin?

The success of finding your best hair color for olive skin directly depends on your undertone. So, if you haven’t identified it yet, it’s high time to do it. Depending on that, you can choose from caramel, auburn, cinnamon, mocha, wine red, and even blonde hair colors.

• Going for caramel, don’t forget to complement it with ashy highlights to add some definition.
• In case you fall for auburn, here you’re free to choose from electric to natural shades.
• Cinnamon looks its best with an olive skin tone when used as highlights.
• Mocha is hugely complementary all year round, but especially in winter.
• Should you decide to opt for wine red, any shade of it will work wonders for an olive complexion.
• As for the blonde hair color, your go-to options are platinum and bronde, which is a mix of blonde and brown.

Natural Makeup Ideas For Olive Skin Tones

It is a known fact that olive complexion is a beautiful one. At times it seems that you need just the least of makeup to emphasize that natural beauty. Truth be told, that is the right assumption. If you are running out of time or simply do not care for complex makeup, the best way to emphasize this beautiful tone is to wear some mascara and nude lipstick, like Eva Gürbüz.

Useful Tip: To add some dewy look to your makeup, put just a bit of blush topped with highlighter on as well.

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Everyday Makeup Ideas for Olive Skin Tone

In a few words, when it comes to the most flattering eyeshadow shades for olive skin for everyday look, you can go for neutral brown or golden-champagne shades, like Salma Khan. Each choice will be quite complimenting.

Evening Makeup Looks for Olive Skin Tone

Even when you’re about to stand out at a night-out party, you should be gentle with makeup colors. All in all, olive-toned skin looks its best when accentuated with matching natural tones finished with a bright but complementing highlight. It can be a dramatic cat-eye or a sultry shade of lipstick: the point is to create a harmonic base with soft nude eyeshadow, lightweight bronze or pinkish blush, and a slight hint of highlighter.

Useful Tips:

• If you’d like to add some warm accent to your medium olive skin tone, try some salmon or coral-pink eyeshadow.
• As for the cool olive skin, you will love the way it glows when enhanced with nude chocolate eyeshadow and glittery accents.

Celebrities With Olive Skin Tone

Salma Hayek is an outstanding and well-known actress. Her Mexican origin and olive skin tone add up greatly to her recognizable look. She proves that all natural makeup sometimes is the best to opt for.

Eva Mendes is a great singer and gorgeous model. When it comes to the makeup that she wears, she makes the most of her olive skin tone too. The bright blush together with well-defined eyes creates that mesmerizing impression that many fall for.

Another olive-skinned actress that gained impressive popularity is Jessica Szohr. She thinks that smokey eyes and nude-shaded lips accent her skin tone best, and I couldn’t agree more.

Alessandra Ambrosio is a successful actress with Brazilian roots. Her olive skin tone is hard to underestimate since it grants her that well-recognized definition. Truth be told, she is well aware of her olive skin effect and she uses it to her advantage all the time.

Not all the celebrities can show off crystal blue eyes and olive skin. However, Adriana Lima can. With natural beauty like that she does not need a lot of makeup to accent her personality. In most cases, she gives in to natural makeup and looks astonishing with it.

If you wonder who is the most desirable woman of this century – most men will answer that it is Kim Kardashian. It seems that there is not a single look that she wouldn’t be able to pull off. In most cases, she opts for classy smokey eyes and matte nude lips.

Jessica Alba is yet another amazing actress with olive skin. When it comes to the makeup, she sticks to the classics and looks marvelous.

When you think olive skin and celebrities you can’t simply go past charming Penelope Cruz. Classic liner and natural lips accent her beautiful skin just perfectly.

Olive skin is that defining feature of gorgeous Olivia Munn. While she prefers to sport natural eye makeup, when it comes to the lipstick – wine red it is! Perfect french makeup!

Unlike many other celebs with olive skin, Rita Ora does not fear to match bold red lips with her platinum blonde hair. Besides, classy black liner is what she uses to finish her bedazzling look.

FAQ: Olive Skin

• Olive skin is a human skin color spectrum. It is often associated with pigmentation in the Type III to Type IV and Type V ranges of the Fitzpatrick scale. Source
• Your skin tone, also called undertone, is different from your complexion, which is the shade of your skin (light, medium, dark). Source
• Understanding the undertone of your skin is the cornerstone of buying the right foundation shade to create a flawless makeup look. We have some fundamental information that we can pass on to help you master this skill. Source