Your shade, on your own skin

Two or three, and pick them from either side of where you think you sit rather than three in a row. Almost nobody guesses their own depth correctly from a screen, so a spread tells you far more than three near identical shades will. If you would rather not guess at all, send me a selfie in daylight and I will tell you which two to order.

Enough for one to two full face applications, depending on how much coverage you like. That is deliberately more than a single test patch, because a shade can look right on your jaw and wrong across your whole face. Wear it out of the house for a day before you decide.

Along the jaw, not on the back of your hand, because your hand is rarely the same colour as your face. Then step into daylight near a window and give it twenty minutes before you judge it. Foundation settles and can shift very slightly as it warms to your skin. The right shade will look like nothing at all. If you can see where it starts and stops, it is not the one.

Try whichever formula you would actually buy, because the shade names do not cross over between the two. Liquid suits drier, mature or easily upset skin and gives a fresher finish. Powder is a soft matte with SPF built in and suits shine and humidity. If you cannot decide, order one of each in the depth you think you are.

Write to me and tell me what each one did. Too pink, too yellow, too light on the jaw, disappeared by lunchtime, all of it is useful. That information usually gets us to the right shade in one more go, and quite often the answer is mixing two, which plenty of my customers do quite happily.