I worked with a makeup artist to find the best best lipsticks, pencils, and glosses for medium skin tones — here are the 12 lip products we both keep coming back to

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• Most lip colors are not universal and are instead catered towards light skin with warm pink undertones. Medium skin tones tend to have a wide blend of yellow, blue, and olive undertones, making it slightly tougher to find the right lip colors.
• I spoke with famed makeup artist David Maderich about how to choose the right shades for medium skin, and used my own experience to put together a list of the best lip colors.
• From soft nude lipsticks to matte pink stains and hydrating ruby red balms, here are the lipsticks, glosses, and stains that Maderich and I recommend.

When I first started wearing makeup, I purchased about 18 different shades of lipsticks, glosses, and balms labeled "nude," all of which looked unnaturally pink on me. Like many others with similar skin tones, I tried just about every lip product recommended to me by magazines only to realize that most shades weren't catered to my medium-toned Indian skin.

Over the past decade, however, I've cultivated a tried-and-true coalition of lip products I use in rotation, many of which I started using by recommendation of David Maderich, previously Prince's makeup artist, whose work can now be seen on "The Real Housewives of Potomac." I consulted Maderich in putting together this guide of the best lip colors for medium skin. But, not all of these picks will be universal.

How to choose the right color for you

Medium-toned skin has a wide range within it — and of course, not everything works for everyone. However, one common trait that almost all medium skin tones have is warm, yellow undertones. For that reason, Maderich emphasizes the importance of staying away from cool-toned colors like frosty baby pinks and bright neon oranges. But, if you're anything like me, you can't always look at a pink lipstick and tell a cool undertone from a warm one. Maderich's easy tip is to test a color on the back of your wrist, where you can see the color in your veins. Whatever the color looks like against the vein and your surrounding skin is precisely how it will appear on the lips.

Below, you'll find my personal favorite lip colors for my own medium skin, along with advice from Maderich on choosing the right colors for your skin tone.

The 14 best lipsticks and pencils for medium skin tones:Read the original article on Insider