Selecting the ideal pigment for microblading, especially for lips, involves understanding the client's skin tone and warmth. Skin tones generally fall into three categories: pale and rosy, olive and tan, or deep-hued and dark. By determining the warmth (tone) of the client's skin, you can choose the appropriate eyebrow color from a specific color palette.
Understanding Skin Tone and Pigment Interaction
The interaction between pigment and skin tone is crucial for achieving the desired results in semi-permanent makeup. A common issue among Permanent Makeup artists is the discrepancy between the pigment color on practice skin and the actual skin. This can lead to eyebrows turning red or gray as the scabs heal.
This happens because the human skin is not like a white paper. Both the skin and the pigments used have warm and cold tones, which must be considered during the color-matching process.
Levels of Human Skin Color
Human skin color can be categorized into two levels:
- Skin Color: Deep or Light
- Tone: Warm or Cold
Warm Colors
- Body Color: Mainly yellow
- Skin Color: Ivory, golden yellow
Cold Colors
- Body Color: Mainly blue
- Skin Color: Pink, blue, dark purple, taupe
Methods to Test Skin Tone
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Blood Vessels Method:
- Examine the color of the blood vessels around your wrists, elbows, and temples.
- Green/Olive Vessels: Warm-toned complexion
- Blue Vessels: Cold-toned complexion
- Indistinguishable Vessels: Likely a midtone
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Picture Testing:
- Place your hand on a color chart.
- Closer to the right: Warm-toned
- Closer to the left (pink): Cold-toned
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Sun Reaction:
- Observe your skin's reaction to sun exposure.
- Easily sunburned: Cold complexion
- Prone to tanning: Warm complexion
Other methods include testing with gold and silver jewelry or using white paper for comparison.
Choosing the Right Color
Once you have identified the client's skin tone, select a pigment that complements their warmth. Understand the base of your colors, as every pigment brand should have warm, cold, and neutral colors. Many brands and distributors may lack knowledge about color bases, leading to pigments turning red or blue on the skin.
Use red translucent film to represent warm skin and blue translucent film to represent cold skin.
- Cold tones + Cold colors: Results in gray, dark, or blue
- Warm-toned skin + Warm color: Results in reddish tones
Formula for Eyebrow Color: Eyebrow Color = Pigment Color + Skin Color + Skin Tone
By understanding and applying these principles, you can ensure more accurate and satisfying results in microblading, tailored specifically to each client’s unique skin tone and warmth.