How it works
Upload a portrait, click three natural skin areas, then add a wrist-vein check. Face color, vein undertone, contrast and season combine into your palette.
Free personal color analysis · 10k+ palettes revealed
Reveal the Colors That Make You Glow
Upload your photo and discover the shades that brighten your skin, flatter your undertone, and make you look instantly more radiant.
★★★★★ Loved by thousands of women
From the editor
Color science with receipts, not vibes.
Most personal-color content on the open web is recycled intuition — "warm undertones glow in olive!" — with no measurement, no source, no way for you to check. Palette Reveal exists because we wanted the opposite: a publication that runs the math, shows the math, and says out loud when the math is uncertain.
Every palette we publish is computed in CIE Lab, the perceptually-uniform color space the ISO defines for printer inks and the textile industry uses to grade dye lots. When we say a color matches your undertone, we mean the b-axis distance between your skin's measured average and the swatch is below a stated threshold. When we say a season runs cool-neutral, we mean a specific position on the a- and b- axes — not how the photo "feels." That number-first habit matters because the same face can look "warm" under a yellow kitchen bulb and "cool" under an overcast window; the measurement holds across both, and that is the whole point.
The same standard runs the journal. Every article carries a named author and a publication date. Every non-obvious claim — a Lab value, a season threshold, a published study — links to its source. Where academic literature disagrees with the popular advice, we say so. The 12-season system, for example, is a commercial framework from the early 1980s, not a peer-reviewed taxonomy; we use it as a useful shorthand and we mark where the categories actually blur.
None of this replaces an in-person draping appointment with a trained color analyst, and it isn't meant to. A consultant sees the colors fall on your skin in real light; a webcam cannot. What this site does well is give you a measured, reproducible starting point — a defensible palette for shopping, a way to test whether the makeup you already own is fighting your face, and a vocabulary for talking to a stylist or a tailor about why something works.
We don't run undisclosed sponsorships and we don't operate an affiliate program. The free tools — palette test, makeup match, outfit compatibility — work in full without an account. The paid products exist so we can pay the bills and keep the tools free. If you spot an error in a measurement or a citation, the contact link in the footer goes to a real inbox and is read by a person.
— Antonio Peluso, founder & editor · About the editor · Read how the engine works · The journal
The whole picture
From a single portrait to a wardrobe you trust
Four steps. No quiz, no guessing. The engine reads your skin, undertone, contrast and clarity from the photo, then gives you the palette you can actually wear.
The science
Green wrist veins suggest warmth; blue or violet veins suggest coolness; mixed veins suggest neutral. We weight each signal so lighting alone never decides.
Why it matters
Colors near the face change how clear, bright or tired the skin appears. Match clothing, makeup and accessories to the same temperature and the whole look feels intentional.
What you get
A free, browser-only color tool for quick wardrobe, shopping and makeup decisions. Save unlimited palettes. Privacy-first - your photo never leaves your device.
From the journal
Color analysis, decoded
Long-form guides from our Editor-in-Chief and contributors — the science of CIE Lab, the history of seasonal analysis from Itten to TikTok, and field-tested wardrobe playbooks.
Color theory in plain English: hue, value, chroma
The three dimensions that decide whether a color flatters you. Munsell vs CIE Lab vs HSL without the math.
Read the guideThe 100-year history of personal color analysis
From Bauhaus to Carole Jackson's Color Me Beautiful to Seoul's 2024 PCA boom.
Read the guideWarm vs cool undertones: how to tell
Five reliable tests — veins, jewelry, sun, white-vs-cream, and the Lab b-axis — with troubleshooting for mixed signals.
Read the guideBuilding a 30-piece capsule by your season
Two anchors, three palette tones, one accent — the formula behind a wardrobe where everything works together.
Read the guideWhy personal color analysis exploded in Korea
How Seoul turned an '80s American fad into a global TikTok phenomenon, with hex-coded palette IDs.
Read the guideHow camera white balance distorts color analysis
Why an iPhone in tungsten light says you're a Summer when you're actually a Spring, and how to neutralise it.
Read the guideThree free tools, one account
Pick where to start
Upload a photo for the full color analysis, confirm your undertone with your wrist veins, or check whether an outfit matches your palette.
Tool 01 · Free
Upload, sample, reveal.
Drop in 1-3 portraits and click the same three skin areas: forehead, cheek, jawline. The engine returns your undertone, season, glow palette, makeup family and styling notes - in seconds.
- 12-season classification with confidence score
- 36-color extended palette with hex codes
- Save unlimited palettes to your account
Soft Autumn
Warm · muted · low contrast
Tool 02 · Free
Confirm with wrist veins.
Upload a wrist photo. We read the vein color (green, blue or mixed) and combine it with your portrait to refine your makeup palette - the most reliable undertone signal there is.
- Pixel-level vein zoom + crosshair
- Auto-detects warm / cool / neutral / olive
- Refines lipstick, blush and eyeshadow picks
Cool · blue undertone
Tool 03 · Free
Check color compatibility.
Upload a skin photo and an outfit. We compare dominant colors against your season and give you an honest match score - and which swap would push it from "fine" to "you".
- Outfit, makeup or accessories - any image works
- Match score 0-100 with reasoning
- Suggests the closest hex from your palette
Match score
Soft Autumn fit
Privacy first
Your photo never leaves your device.
Palette Reveal does not sell uploaded images, does not train on them, and does not need to store them. The analysis runs in your browser. The only thing we ever save is the palette you choose to save - and only if you ask.