Education · 4 min read
How to shade match Crush Tint from a screen
Four shades, no counter, and a phone camera that lies about colour. Here is the method that actually works.
Shade matching from a screen is genuinely hard, and anybody who tells you their chart solves it is selling the chart. What follows is the method we give people who message us, and it gets it right most of the time.
Match to your jaw, not your hand
The skin on the back of your hand is usually a full shade darker than your face and a different undertone entirely. Hold the swatch against your jawline where face meets neck. That join is the only place a foundation has to disappear.
Daylight, indirect, no filter
Stand near a window, face it, and turn every indoor light off. Warm bulbs push everything yellow and phone cameras auto-correct aggressively. If the photo looks slightly flat and boring, the colour is probably honest.
When in doubt, go lighter
Crush Tint warms very slightly as it settles — the emulsion is designed to. Between two shades, the lighter one lands correctly after ten minutes. The darker one keeps getting darker.
Undertone matters more than depth
Chill Nude and Warm Sand sit at almost the same depth; the difference is that one is neutral-cool and the other is golden. Depth mismatches are forgivable at arm's length. Undertone mismatches read as a mask.
Still unsure? Send a photo of your jaw in daylight to the studio on Instagram and we will tell you which of the four to take, including if the answer is none of them.