The best ways to select shades that work for you
Do you ever find yourself wondering if the clothes you wear are in shades that actually suit you? Perhaps you’re stuck wearing a lot of neutrals and are bored of playing it safe. By learning more about your skin tone and discovering your colour season, you can select tones that work with your natural colouring rather than against it.
What is a colour season?
Your colour season determines which colours harmonise best with you. A clothing colour is harmonious if it complements certain aspects of your own colouring. Wearing the wrong colours can make you look more tired or washed out, so choosing the right colours to wear ensures that your outfit looks good against your skin and complements your skin tone and features. These colours are organised into colour seasons and each of them have their own specific colour pallet. The season you fall into depends on the colour of your eyes, hair and skin. Read on to find out how to identify your skin tone and find the best colours to suit you.
The first step to finding your colour season is by identifying the undertones in your skin, hair and eyes. These can either be warm or cool toned:
Skin undertones:
Looking at the inside of your arm or your wrist, if you have a pink or rosy undertone and blue tinted veins, you have a cool skin tone.
If you have a golden or apricot undertone and green tinted veins, you have a warm skin tone.
People with cool undertones may get sunburn easily whereas people with warm undertones may tan easier.
Eye tones:
Cool toned eye colours include grey, vibrant green, blue or violet whereas some warm toned eye colours include hazel, brown and amber.
Hair colour:
Lastly, looking at your hair colour. If you have black, grey, ashy brown or whitish blonde hair, you have cool toned hair. If you have chestnut, caramel, rich brown, red/auburn, yellow or strawberry blonde hair, you have warm toned hair.
If you have suffered from hair loss, don’t worry. Just think about your natural hair colour or your preferred wig colour.
The perfect colours for you
If all of your features have obviously warm undertones, you look best in soft warm colours. Your colour seasons are spring and autumn. Spring consists of fresh, bright and warm colours and autumn includes warm, golden and earthy tones. Avoid cool, crisp and icy colours and obviously cool and muted tones.
If all your features have obviously cool undertones, you look best in more icy tones. Your colour seasons would be summer and winter. Summer consists of soft, cool tones whereas winter involves cool, icy colours such as greens and blues. Avoid obviously warm colours.
If there is a contrast between the undertones of your features, you may be a mixture of all colour seasons. Pay attention to the colours that look best on you. However, try to pick the undertone that is most common within your features. If you have red hair and cool skin, you may still fit into the warm family because red hair is an overwhelmingly warm feature.
We haven’t forgotten about the third undertone category, Neutrals! If your undertones are neither warm, nor cold and you can’t tell which one you lean more towards, you are a neutral. This means that you can wear practically any colour and it will still look good on you! However, colours such as jade green and Bermuda blue are especially complimentary to your skin. As well as neutrals such as grey, black, white and cream.
Like many things in life, these rules aren’t hard and fast – if there is a colour that you adore, but it isn’t in your season, don’t worry! According to experts, we can all wear practically any colour, it’s just that some colours will suit us the best. The most important thing to remember when wearing colour, is to choose shades that make you feel good every time you wear them.
