Lumière is an iOS app that scans your face, returns a tone-aware read of your skin, and tracks how it changes week by week. It's free on iOS today, calibrated for the full Fitzpatrick range and the Monk Skin Tone scale, and built around the clinical distinction between post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation (PIH) and post-inflammatory erythema (PIE) — a difference that matters enormously on darker skin and that most consumer skincare AI collapses into a single "hyperpigmentation" finding.
Why Lumière exists
Most consumer skincare AI was trained on lighter skin — it's a well-documented data problem in dermatology AI. The downstream consequence is the one users actually live with: a Black, Brown, or deeper-skinned person opens a skincare app, scans her face, and gets back "you have oily skin" as her entire analysis. Or worse — the app misreads her undertone, calls her PIH "redness," and recommends the wrong treatment protocol entirely.
That's not an aesthetic complaint. It's a real gap between the technology and the person it's meant to help. Lumière was built to close that gap, not by training a new AI from scratch (a multi-year, multi-million-dollar undertaking we honestly don't have the resources for), but by anchoring every reading to a tone classification first and interpreting findings in that context. The methodology page documents exactly what that means in clinical terms.
What Lumière does
- Tone-aware face scans. Single selfie, structured read in seconds. Anchored to Fitzpatrick I–VI and the Monk Skin Tone scale (1–10) before any pigmentation or vascular finding is interpreted.
- PIH vs PIE differentiation. Two findings, two treatment protocols. Most consumer AI conflates them. We don't.
- Weekly Journey tracking. Side-by-side scans across weeks, milestones at 4, 12, 26, and 52, and visible-change detection that tells you what's actually working before you'd notice it in the mirror.
- Personalised AM and PM routines. Built from your scan, your skin profile, your concerns, your climate. Not from whatever a brand is pushing this week.
- An AI skin coach that learns your skin. Reads every scan, journal entry, and routine completion. By scan four, the chat answers questions with your data, not generic tips.
- A peer community + Skin Twin matching. Find users with skin profiles similar to yours and see what's working for them.
- Honest shop. Product recommendations ranked by ingredient compatibility, not commission. Lumière doesn't currently take affiliate cuts — read the details.
What Lumière is not
- Not a medical device. Lumière's analysis is informational, not diagnostic. We surface estimates of visible skin signs. We don't diagnose disease, prescribe treatments, or replace a board-certified dermatologist. For anything that hurts, bleeds, changes shape, or doesn't look right, see a clinician.
- Not a one-time scanner. The value compounds across weeks. A single scan is useful; eight weeks of scans on a Journey map is a different product entirely.
- Not for sale to advertisers. Photos are never shared with advertisers, data brokers, or sold to anyone. The full privacy policy lists every sub-processor.
Who built Lumière
Lumière is built and maintained by a solo founder out of the United States. The technical and editorial work — every line of code, every article on this site, every methodology decision — is the work of one person who lived the melanin-rich-skin AI gap personally and decided to close it.
That's both the strength and the honest limitation of the product right now. It's a small operation. It moves fast, ships often, and answers email directly. It also doesn't have a marketing team, a clinical advisory board, or a team page that lists ten engineers. Those are real things to be honest about, and they're real things that come later. For now: one person, one mission, one app.
Press inquiries: press kit · support@lumiere-skin.us
How Lumière sustains itself
Lumière is free to download on iOS — no ads, no commissions on product links, no data sold. Lumière Pro is the paid tier, available at $9.99 / month or $69 / year (saves 42%), billed via Apple In-App Purchase, with no free trial. Pro adds longitudinal AI coaching across every scan, proactive anomaly alerts on score drops and new findings, the deep-dive clinical report on every scan, advanced ingredient and product compatibility analysis, and priority access to new features.
The decision to fund Lumière through subscription rather than affiliate commission is deliberate: it keeps recommendations honest, removes the pressure to push higher-margin products, and aligns our incentives with users instead of with retailers. We make money from you, not from brands. The decision to launch Pro without a free trial is also deliberate — the free tier IS the trial. If the app works on your skin, the upgrade is real; if it doesn't, you owe nothing.
Contact
- Support: support@lumiere-skin.us
- Privacy / data requests: privacy@lumiere-skin.us
- Content moderation / community reports: moderation@lumiere-skin.us
- Legal notices: legal@lumiere-skin.us
Medical disclaimer. Lumière's skin analysis is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and does not replace professional dermatological evaluation. If you have a persistent or worsening skin concern, please consult a qualified dermatologist.