The Perfect Shade Selection. Skin-matching skill is all-important when choosing your foundation colour. Remember that it is always a mistake to try to alter your colouring with foundation, so look for one that is as close as possible to your natural skin tone. Too light will look unnaturally mask-like, and too dark looks orangey and theatrical. Foundation should never add strong colour to a face but instead take it away-that is, by making the complexion flat and neutral by cooling down too-red areas.

When you shop for a foundation, go out without any on so that you can test colours straight on your face. Take your time and ignore pushy sales assistants while you test each shade on your jawline for face-to-neck blending. Go out into the daylight with a mirror to look at the results. A perfect match will melt into your skin and be barely visible. There's little point in testing colours on your wrist-skin tones are not the same as your face-or under artificial light. And remember that all make-up looks different on your skin than in the package. In the container it is opaque, while on your skin it's translucent.

Deciding on your own colouring. Because skin is a living organ with pores, blood vessels and several layers of surface skin cells it is difficult to judge its colour the way you would a piece of material. Imagine several layers of transparent red, pink, yellow and beige chiffon one on top of the other-how would you describe or match the colour? But it is safe to say that most skin colours fall into the general categories of red or yellow.

*Red can range from pale pink to ruddy brown, blue-tinged alabaster to mahogany-hued black.

*Yellow can stretch from peaches-and-cream to dark olive brown. Though we all have a certain amount of both red and yellow tones in our skin colour, it's the predominant colour you're looking for.

To find your dominant colour check the normally unexposed, untanned parts of your body such as breasts or bottom. A hint of pink or blue means you're in the red family; slightly olive and you're definitely yellow. If still in doubt, try holding a sheet of white paper next to your skin to exaggerate the tone.

Predominantly red skins usually belong to Caucasian types, from fair-skinned blondes through redheads to pale-skinned brunettes. If you have a lot of red in your face, don't wear blue-reds such as fuchsia, cerise or mauve next to your face. But blue pillarbox red is fine. Choose a flat true beige foundation colour without any pink or peach overtones and forgo the blusher which would only emphasize the high colour of your skin.

Predominantly yellow skins belong to the naturally olive or dark-skinned who have little natural blush. Avoid khaki and mustard shades close to your face, but a true sunshine yellow will show up any pink your face may have. Choose a foundation as close to the skin's natural colour as possible, but very slightly pinker.

Black skins can be either red or yellow based, but avoid trying to add any colour as  yellow makes the complexion look drab while pink looks muddy. Find a foundation or mix several different ones to get a colour as close to your natural colouring as possible.

Later you can add plenty of colour interest to your face with blushers, shaders and the whole spectrum of eye an lip colours. The simple rule is - they shouldn't have to compete with your skin shade!