Mac pro longwear concealer NC15 or NW15?

Feb 15, 2016

Kayla E.

Hi lovely ladies, I've been considering purchasing Mac pro longwear concealer because my skin is getting very red and I could use some more coverage.
I'm pretty certain I have cool undertones. My skin looks best with pinkish concealers/foundations. But I was looking at the color swatches on Google images, and NC15 seems a bit yellow to me. Is it less yellow in real life? Which one should I go with?

Thank you so much in advance!

Feb 15, 2016

Alexis C.

MAC's lettering system is kind of backwards so think of NC as "not cool" meaning it's warm toned and NW as "not warm" so it's cool toned. If you have pink undertones you're cool toned so you'll want NW shades.

Feb 15, 2016

Kayla E.

Wow, that makes so much more sense! It's so weird how they do that. Thanks for clearing that up for me, Alexis. I wouldn't want to have bought the wrong undertone.

Feb 15, 2016

Alexis C.

No problem! I believe Jacqueline has a better explanation as to why they've done it like that and what it really means but that's how I think of it and how it makes the most sense to me (:

Feb 15, 2016

Aurora S.

You should be an NW in MAC if you have pink undertones.

The reason why "W" in MAC means pink is because when you look at the color wheel; red, orange and yellow are ALL warm toned colors.
Green, blue and purple are cool toned colors.

With that, if you look at the color wheel it goes red, orange, yellow, green...
Some Yellow toned people can lean yellow/green. Aka olive.
So, yellow can be closer to an actual cool toned complexion.
Which is why "C" for "cool" toned skin is for yellow toned people.
And "W" is for pink toned people.

Feb 15, 2016

Kayla E.

Thank you, Aurora, excellent and easy to understand explanation. I definitely see the logic in the color wheel here. As an art student, it always really confused me that pink skin was classified as cool, being a variant of red.

Feb 15, 2016

Dana E.

I'm cool toned and I use NC 15...