Tag: personal color analysis

How Much Color Does a Colorful Wardrobe Need?

I love color. And as a “Light Summer” in the world of personal color analysis (PCA), there are plenty of gorgeous colors to choose from:

After a detour down the rabbit hole of Instagram-inspired neutrals and with my PCA color palette in hand, I was excited to start wearing color again. After all, I used to regularly dress in electric blue snakeprint blouses and dresses covered in purple tulips with red, green, and yellow accents. (Man I wish I had a picture of that dress to share with you.)

Someone further ahead on the PCA journey than I am cautioned me that neutrals would actually help ground the gorgeous colors in my new palette, and while I knew Kim’s advice was right on, as a color-lover, it felt so much more fun to hunt for my new colors than it did to look for neutrals.

But as I’ve kept working on my Light Summer wardrobe, I’ve settled down on the color factor a bit and started to really appreciate my neutrals. Two particular favorites are a mauve I’ve seen referred to as “faded wine” (ha) and lovely shades of taupe. I also dig a real Light Summer gray – one that’s light and cool enough to elevate a whole outfit but not so cold it looks stark. Basically, the color of a koala.

This taupe looks weird on my monitor, but who would not be excited about that koala??

I’ve also realized that some outfits with a lot of color seem to work, where others read as cotton candy.

Too “old-fashioned gender binary baby shower”:

Eye-blinding – to me it works but in a magical unicorn one-off kind of way:

 

Outfits where color is mixed in with a big dash of “neutral” from my color palette (faded wine, chambray/denim, white, taupe) tend to be less of a gamble:

 

 

So basically I’ve discovered I shouldn’t buy colorful pants, ha. It’s true, though – I’ve tried for years to thrift just the right pink yellow, or purple pants, and even when I’ve hit the hue right on the head, they never really work in my wardrobe. For example, I have a pair of lemon yellow jeans in my drawer right now that I have yet to wear because they just seem to oversaturate every outfit. I’m going to tuck them into storage until spring and see if they improve with a change in the seasons.

Otherwise, the only colorful pants I have right now are green, and I deploy them judiciously. In addition to telling me that my pants forgot to go down all the way (thank you, Sister), my sister commented that the “watermelon” look on the right was overwhelming – fun, yes, but still overwhelming:

 

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So where I’ve landed for now is that my color generally resides in my top half – shirts, blazers, sweaters – and my bottom half stays neutral (with occasional pops of color in my shoes). This makes for a good mix of colors without me feeling like a clown.

How do you portion out color in your outfits? Or does more = better in your book?

My Current Color Palette

Pretty much everybody who writes about building capsule or edited wardrobes recommends that you start by choosing a color palette.

Some of my favorite posts on this topic, also included in the recently updated “Resources” page: Anuschka Rees; Use Less; oodles of examples you just might want to steal on The Vivienne Files 

Choosing a limited number of colors to focus on goes a long way to narrowing down your clothes to a manageable amount that plays well together (aka a capsule wardrobe), and helps you hone your shopping when you want to fill a wardrobe hole or augment what you already have. Color theory goes a long way towards ensuring the colors you choose actually work together; the first two posts linked above will help you get your head around the basic principles.

Seasonal color analysis (aka finding “your” colors) also hinges on color theory, and if you choose to get analyzed (and the analyst is skilled enough to get it right!), you’ll automatically end up with a color palette that goes well with your natural coloring. Here’s mine from my personal color analysis:

See that “three dimensions of color” chart at the bottom? That’s color theory at work – all these colors share about the same level of hue (warm to cool – or in artist speak, yellow to blue), value (light to dark), and chroma (soft to bright – more or less muted). And that’s why they all look good together.

But that’s still a lot of colors to choose from. And while they technically go together, you might not personally love every combo these colors can make. Maybe you hate green or love neutrals or don’t want to look like an Easter egg.

I mean… (and yes, that pink is more bright winter than light summer…the perils of thrifting online where colors in photos can be deceiving)

So a lot of color palette advice suggests narrowing it down to a few core colors, a few neutrals, and maybe an accent or two. Like this:

Ta-da!

This is a general approximation of the colors I’m currently using in my wardrobe – I eyeballed them from the color-picker on my graphics maker. (And of course monitor colors vary – so if these don’t look precisely Light Summer to you, that’s why!)

Most of the clothes in my wardrobe are pink, blue, or green – with a good dose of neutral-friendly white, gray, and a purply-grey sometimes called faded wine (?? I didn’t make it up…). There are just a few items, like the shoes or pants above, that are purple or yellow, which end up giving a little visual interest to my basic color palette:

 

Personal color analysis did most of the work here for me, but narrowing down my color palette even further has kept me from trying to thrift pants or shirts in every color of my Light Summer palette. And committing to some neutrals, as a wise commenter suggested early in this process, has helped me avoid looking like an Easter egg – except when I want to :)

Do you have a color palette for your wardrobe? Does it help you thrift better/maintain a more coherent closet? Or do you go for whatever color strikes your fancy?