Your eyes, skin and hair are the three main factors that determine your ideal color palette.

Are you warm or cool? Knowing the answer will help you easily select frame colors for your new eyeglasses.

Skin

The most influential element when it comes to determining your coloring is your skin tone. Like overall coloring, every person’s complexion is either cool or warm. Warm complexions have a “peaches and cream” or yellow-ish tone, while cool complexions have undertones of pink or blue. While olive complexions combine both cool and warm, they are considered predominantly cool. About 60 percent of people in the United States have a cool complexion.

Eyes

Second to your skin tone, the color of your eyes also contribute to your overall coloring, but this is more difficult to categorize because there are so many variations. For example, having blue eyes doesn’t necessarily mean that you have cool eyes, because gray tones can make them predominantly warm. Similarly, brown eyes can be a light, warm cider color or a cooler shade closer to black, making them hard to define.

Hair

The third factor that determines your coloring is your hair, which is generally easier to categorize than your eyes. For example, brownish gold, matte black, ginger and rich, yellow blonde hair are all warm colors for hair. Cool colors, on the other hand, include white, platinum, strawberry blonde and salt-and-pepper hair.

If you are still having difficulty determining your skin tone, flip over your arm and look at the veins. Veins that appear greenish indicate yellow undertones, which means that your skin tone is warm. Veins that appear to be more blue indicate blue undertones which means your skin tone is cool.

Frame Colors for Eyeglasses

Understanding whether your coloring is warm or cool is the key to choosing eyeglass frames that complement your natural hue.

For example, if you have cool coloring, frames that suit you include ones in magenta, black, blue-gray, pink, amber, charcoal and silver. On the other hand, camel, warm blue, off-white, peach, blonde tortoise, coral, red, copper and gold are all better-suited for people with warm coloring.