How to Choose the Best Coloured Contacts to Match Your Skin Tone

The most active muscles in your body aren't in your arms, back or legs; they're in your eyes!

With more than two million working parts, your eyes process over 36,000 visual messages per hour. In fact, most of the information captured by our brains is through the eyes.

With such a burden of work, your eyes may need some help. Fortunately, you can always correct your vision with prescribed contact lenses. Coming in a range of colours and shades, these lenses also make great fashion accessories.

Read on and find out how you can choose the best coloured contacts to match your skin tone.

The Different Types of Coloured Contacts

Coloured contacts come in different sizes. The colours also have different patterns and densities. To choose the best contact lenses for your skin tone, it's important to know the different types of coloured contacts available.

• Opaque lenses: They entirely mask your natural eye colour.
• Colour-enhancement tints: These contacts only shade your natural eye colour. For instance, if you have blue eyes, these lenses can lighten or darken your natural eye colour.
• Equinox lenses (or circle lenses): They have a dark ring around the iris to bring about a subtle, but dramatic effect. They're particularly effective on light eyes.
• Sports-tinted (or custom-tinted) lenses: They're both practical and cosmetic. The choice of colour may reduce glare and heighten depth perception. They're mostly used by athletes.
• Theatrical lenses (or cosmetic lenses): These add special effects to your eyes. They're usually worn during special occasions like Halloween. For example, you can get cat eyes, wild eyes or even all-black eyes.

Coloured contact lenses are safe as long as they're properly prescribed and cared for.

Determine Your Skin Tone

Your skin can have either a "warm","neutral" or "cool" tone.

A warm skin tone means that your skin has peach, golden or yellow undertones. Cool skin, on the other hand, has bluish, pinkish or reddish undertones. Though not common, some people have a neutral skin tone, which is a mixture of both cool and warm tones.

There's a trick to determine your skin tone. Do you look better in gold or silver accessories? If you have always favoured gold as your best accessory, then it means that you have a warm skin tone. If you lean towards silver accessories, then you likely have a cool skin tone. However, if you look great in both gold and silver accessories, then you likely have a neutral skin tone.

Here's another way to figure out your skin tone: you can check your veins! If you have greenish veins, then you likely have a warm undertone. If you have bluish veins, then it means that you have a cool skin tone. But if your veins seem colourless or matching your skin colour, then you have a neutral skin tone.

Choose Coloured Contacts That Match Your Skin Tone

When choosing coloured contact lenses, it's important to assess how they look on your eyes. They should be essentially invisible, but outstanding enough to give you the most natural appearance.

It's necessary for the contacts to move during blinking. But if the lenses move too much, they'll create a not-so-natural appearance. Also, if the coloured parts of the lenses don't superimpose nicely over your irises, your eyes won't look natural.

Cool Skin Tone

Do you have cool-toned skin? Then you'll look good with grey, purple or blue contacts, as they'll complement your undertones. Generally, it's recommended for people with this skin tone to go for brightly coloured lens colours like turquoise, amethyst and aqua.

Neutral Skin Tone

Neutral-toned skin ranges from a light brown to a light olive complexion. If you have this skin tone, then you can wear any colour you like! People with this skin tone can rock a wide range of colour choices from brown, honey and hazel, to grey, green and violet.

Warm Skin Tone

If you have warm skin tone, the best coloured contacts for your eyes should have highlights of honey, hazel, brown or light blue. These colours will provide a great contrast with your skin tone.

We advise that you choose the colours that complement your specific skin tone.

Other Considerations When Choosing Coloured Contacts

Apart from your skin tone, there are other factors to consider when determining the best coloured contacts for your eyes. They include:

Hair Colour

Blonde hair not only suits a wide range of eye colours, but also makes your eye shades look even more radiant. For best results, however, consider blue, green or violet lenses.

The best coloured contacts to match any shade of red hair is green. Bright green contacts are more suited for deep shades of red hair, while darker green tones go well with lighter red hair. You can also consider blue contacts if you don't want to go with the typical green.

If you have brown hair, then go for brown or hazel contact lenses. Different shades of brown work well together to bring out a natural and effective look. If you want to go for a drastic look, then blue will do the trick!

Just like blonde hair, black hair pairs well with all eye colours. From lighter shades of green to darker shades of brown, they'll all look fantastic with black hair.

Lighting

With the help of a handheld mirror, check how your coloured contacts look in both low and bright light conditions. Also, consider where you'll most likely wear the contacts. Are they just for a Halloween costume? Or will you wear them every day to work?

If you've narrowed it down to two colours, that's great! Try wearing a different colour on each eye and check the results in different lighting.

Get the Best Coloured Contacts for Your Skin Tone!

No matter what colour you get, make sure to take proper care of your contacts. If you've never worn them before, take time to learn how to keep them clean and moistened. Also, follow your eye practitioner's instructions. This is especially so for the type of lenses you should wear and when to replace them.

Once you've found the best coloured contacts for your skin tone, you'll be turning heads left and right!