Emoji Modifier (Skin Tone)

What is an Emoji Modifier?

An emoji modifier is a Unicode character that, when placed immediately after a compatible base emoji, modifies its appearance — specifically its skin tone. Unicode currently defines five emoji modifiers, all from the Fitzpatrick scale, a medical classification system for human skin types developed by dermatologist Thomas B. Fitzpatrick in 1975. These modifiers allow users to select a skin tone for human-figure emoji rather than defaulting to the generic yellow/cartoon representation.

The five emoji modifiers occupy code points U+1F3FB through U+1F3FF:

How Emoji Modifiers Work

Emoji modifiers work by being placed immediately after a modifier base emoji — a human-figure emoji that has been designated as accepting skin tone modification. The Unicode Standard maintains a list of emoji modifier bases. When a rendering engine encounters a modifier base followed by one of the five modifier characters, it renders the combined sequence as a single modified emoji.

For example: - 👋 (WAVING HAND SIGN, U+1F44B) + 🏽 (U+1F3FD) = 👋🏽 (waving hand with medium skin tone) - 🤝 (HANDSHAKE, U+1F91D) accepts two modifiers in a ZWJ sequence for mixed skin tones: 🤝🏻🏿

If a platform does not support skin tone modification, it renders the modifier character separately — typically as a small colored square — rather than crashing or showing nothing.

Modifier Bases vs. Non-Modifier Bases

Not all human-figure emoji are modifier bases. The Unicode Emoji Data files define Emoji_Modifier_Base as an explicit property. Non-human emoji (🌍, 🎸, 🐶) never accept modifiers. Some human emoji that are highly abstracted (👤 BUST IN SILHOUETTE) are not modifier bases because skin tone modification would not make visual sense.

As of Unicode 15.1, there are over 100 emoji modifier base characters, covering a wide range of human activities, hand gestures, professions, sports, and face emoji.

Diversity Combinations with ZWJ

Emoji modifiers combine with ZWJ sequences to create diverse multi-person emoji. A handshake with two different skin tones is encoded as:

🫱🏻‍🫲🏿

Which decomposes as: RIGHTWARDS HAND (U+1FAF1) + MODIFIER TYPE-1-2 (U+1F3FB) + ZWJ (U+200D) + LEFTWARDS HAND (U+1FAF2) + MODIFIER TYPE-6 (U+1F3FF).

This layering of modifiers and ZWJ creates a combinatorially large space of possible sequences. Not all combinations are in the official Unicode emoji list, and platform support varies significantly.

Fitzpatrick Scale Background

Thomas Fitzpatrick developed his scale in 1975 to classify skin response to ultraviolet light for medical purposes. Type I burns easily and never tans; Type VI never burns and tans very darkly. Unicode mapped its five modifiers roughly to Fitzpatrick's six types by merging Types 1 and 2 (both very light). The medical origin means the scale was not designed for emoji — it is a response-to-UV classification, not a representation of all human skin tone diversity — but it was the most widely recognized dermatological standard available when Unicode needed to encode skin tone variation in 2015.

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