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I was wondering whether there was a prevailing view regarding whether it was best to have all the troops in a given WHFB/KOW to all have the same shade of skin colour. I had noticed that most armies posted online try to keep skin colour fairly uniform. Any thoughts in relation to this?

Painting the same skin color allows for easier batch painting. Painting different ones adds variety, making it more time consuming. It really depends on what you want for the army though. Do you want an army with diversity, or do you want uniformity?

Regardless, do what you want to do.

I always do variety over clones, its just better in every way. The latter is simply laziness.

I think in the future we will all be pretty beige, but generally if I am doing flesh I will try to mix a few skintone colours on the palette, it will subtly change without breaking cohesion.

That said, you could always put a black dude in the squad as well if you were so inclined, the issue becomes painting him to not look like wood or leather (from what I've read, I've never tried).

Unfortunately our skin tones paints are not very PC, so blacks and other shin tones require a bit of trial n error to get right.

I have found different washes over the same base coat can change things up pretty easy. About 1/4 to 1/3 of my guard I used a brown ink on and they make a decent black skin tone.

The easiest way to do it is to mark out your squads, put a drop of colour on the bases if you've not started uniforms or markings. Put them on your table, line them up, then quarter the group in a different direction, and paint those quarters with the skin tones you want.
Line them up by squad again, shuffle them, quarter again, and do hair.

I'll try and snap a picture later of my IG regiment where I've done this for Tanith and Mordians, it does look good if you have a strong uniform on the models.

Warcolours and Wargames Foundry do very good skin tone paints.
Example of use with a bit about how to shade and such:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/657413.page

 SQRT(-2) wrote:
Unfortunately our skin tones paints are not very PC

If you look at the more traditional wargame companies like those who cater more to historical, they're not un-PC, they're just geographical.

I mean if you go too far back you might find Nignog Brown and Jolly Foreigner Tan but it's been a while since I last saw those on the market.

Jolly foreigner tan? Lol.

Help me, who are they referring to?

Spaniards, probably.

That was my phone correcting "Jonny Foreigner" which is just a really archaic and bigoted British expression for anyone colonial.

ANYWAY.

Vallejo also do at least one skin tone set, but the most expansive are definitely the two I mentioned.