FAQ
How does the scan work?
When you tap Scan, the app opens your front camera, checks the lighting in your room, asks you to capture under a brief flash sequence, then uses face detection to find your skin and read its colour. The reading is converted into LAB colour space and classified into one of 24 buckets. The whole thing takes under a minute.
Why does my screen flash during the scan?
The screen flashes a quick sequence of reference colours during capture. In our v2 native app, this sequence will be used to mathematically calibrate your skin reading by measuring how your skin reflects each colour. In the current PWA version, browser camera limits prevent us from using the sequence for full calibration, so the flash mainly helps detect your face in dim rooms. We chose to be upfront about this rather than dress it up.
What's a bucket?
A bucket is a combination of one undertone and one depth. Melanin Match uses 4 undertones (warm, cool, neutral, olive) and 6 depths (light, light-medium, medium, medium-deep, deep, very deep). That's 24 possible buckets. Most matching tools use 4 to 8 buckets total. We use 24 because the difference between “warm light” and “neutral light” matters, especially for melanin-rich skin where most tools flatten the range entirely.
Why do I see so much Fenty in my recommendations?
Because Fenty currently has the largest, most thoughtfully built shade range for melanin-rich skin on the market. The database is curated, not exhaustive. We only add brands that are actually inclusive across the depth and undertone spectrum. As more brands earn it, they get added.
Do you store my photo?
No. The scan happens on your device, the colour reading is extracted, and the photo itself is not saved to our servers. We store your bucket result and the LAB values used to calculate it. We don't store images.
What if my recommendations don't match in real life?
Shade matching from a digital scan is a starting point, not a guarantee. Real-life factors like skin chemistry, oxidation, formula thickness, and how a product wears across a day can shift how a shade looks on you. If a recommendation is off, scan again in different lighting, try the dupe section to find alternatives, and let us know. Feedback shapes how the algorithm gets refined.