Analyse Your Colour Contrast

There are very few articles written about COLOUR CONTRAST or COLOUR DOMINANCE and yet it is an important factor in how we all choose our outfits to reflect our features and personality. Personally I have learned a lot about how to dress and feel great by using COLOUR CONTRAST. An interesting question - as always - am I fascinated by this because it is an important part of my physical features? Or do I focus on this part of my physical appearance because it reflects who I am? Chicken and egg! My best guess having spent time preparing for this blog, is that key elements in my personality are that I am optimistic, positive, confidant, creative and energetic. For me to express those through my wardrobe as I am aging and my natural colouring is fading I have subconsciously created a version of me that expresses who I am on the inside. I am a warm season who started going white at eighteen years old (thanks Dad x) - if you are a totally warm season, grey hair is a challenge even now in my fifties. Since my mid twenties I have coloured my hair with auburn undertones, orange undertones or strawberry blonde. Slowly gettting lighter as my natural hair would have gone lighter grey.

So here are my features :

You can see in this photo that the hair is a bit of a feature for me. It is COLOUR DOMINANT - people notice it and it really changes how I can wear colour.

When it was dark brown I had:

NEUTRAL hair colour

COLOUR in my eyes although they appeared brown - so neutral really

NEUTRAL pale skin colour-compared to the hair

My contrast came in depth - dark hair and pale skin - so all about value, not colour. I looked good wearing a neutral and one colour, maybe pulled together with a print. My skin tone is not as clear as it was and now if I dyed my hair dark brown it would be too harsh against my skin and make me look older, like I was trying too hard to be youthful. Choosing the red hair in mid tone is probably closer to the tone of grey my natural hair is at this point, but it gives me more colour choice. Now I have:

DOMINANT COLOUR in my hair

COLOUR in my eyes with the warmth highlighted

NEUTRAL skin

I have less contrast between my lightest and darkest features, but I have more colour contrast. To find out how much contrast just plot yours onto a basic colour wheel like this :

Before you can chart your colours, you need to know which colours count as neutrals and which ones go onto the colour wheel.

For hair:

Colours are strawberry or golden blonde, copper red tones, auburn red tones and dyed colours such as red, pink, violet or blue.

Neutrals are black, brown, white, grey, ash blonde/brown and white blonde

For eyes:

Colours are blue, blue/green, green, hazel green and very golden bronze.

Neutrals are grey, brown, and almost black.

For skin:

Colours are obvious pink tones or obvious bronze

Neutrals are white, beige, deep brown or black.

To work out your level of COLOUR CONTRAST see the table below:

ALL NEUTRAL IS LOW COLOUR CONTRAST

WEAR ALL ONE COLOUR IN A MONOCHROMATIC COMBINATION OR ALL NEUTRALS

ONE COLOUR IS LOW - MEDIUM COLOUR CONTRAST

WEAR NEUTRALS AND ONE COLOUR

TWO COLOURS IS MEDIUM / MEDIUM HIGH

YOU MUST ALWAYS WEAR SOME COLOUR AND CAN WEAR TWO AT THE SAME TIME

THREE COLOURS IS HIGH COLOUR CONTRAST

YOU MUST ALWAYS WEAR MORE THAN ONE COLOUR

For me this is true - even if I am wearing navy head to toe I will always add a colour injection - maybe a scarf, large statement earrings, shoes or a handbag. Probably two of them in the one colour.

The next part of your analysis if you have any colours on the colour wheel is to look at where they fall. All of my colours in my hair and eyes fall closely together - an analogous combination. This in theory means that I should look best in ANALOGOUS colour combinations. I do wear a lot of green with navy/denim trousers, turquoise with navy and warm red with navy which are all analogous. I think, because my hair is COLOUR DOMINANT it gives me the confidence to wear complimentary colour combinations as a small piece added for that extra fun - with jeans and a green jacket I will add a red tee and scarf with red and green; with a red/orange printed dress with a highlight of turquoise I will add a turquoise cardigan and I will wear orange with jeans. If I feel that the colours are overwhelming me a little then I will wear my bright lipstick to increase my own colour contrast.

The most important part of working with clients is that you can have a sense of their personality and that has a major part to play in how they wear their colours. Because of my personality - I am confident with colour and feel happy when I wear two pieces. Whether my features are technically MEDIUM/HIGH or LOW-MEDIUM COLOUR CONTRAST it really doesn’t matter. I feel good with my choice and that makes me happy and confident - that matters. Have a go at analysing your COLOUR CONTRAST too. I would love to hear if you found it as interesting to do as I did. The next post will be on VALUE CONTRAST. Hope you keep reading

Anni x