laneimageconsultingWhen I discovered the colours that suited me best, I initially went a bit crazy wearing lots of combinations of colours together. The colours were right for my skintone but somehow, the combination didn’t work well for me. However, I did observe that lots of people looked great wearing several colours together. The reason for this is related to our colour contrast value. If you have a high colour contrast, you look great in lots of colour and conversely if you have a low colour contrast you look better wearing a monochromatic look or one colour in different tints, tones and shades. So how do you work out what your colour contrast value is?
You need to figure out if your hair, eyes and skin are coloured or neutral. This table will help you:
| Hair Colour | All cool browns, All Cool Blonds, Platinum, White, Black | Neutral |
| Warm Browns, Warm Blondes, Strawberry Blond, Red, Copper, Purple, Violet Etc. | Coloured | |
| Eye Colour | Grey, Brown, Black | Neutral |
| Blue, Green , Olive, Bronze | Coloured | |
| Skin | Clear, Colour ranges from light to medium beige, White, Deep Brown, Dark black | Neutral |
| Red or Florid, Bronzed, Golden | Coloured |
The more colour you see in you skin, hair and eyes, the more colour you can wear.
If you are all neutrals, you look best in neutral or monochromatic colours.
If you have 1 colour then you will look best in 1 colour worn with neutrals.
If you have 2 or 3 colours you will look fabulous wearing lots of colour.
Examples:
Neutral Hair (Ash Blond), Neutral Skin (Light Beige), Neutral Eyes (Grey) – Low Colour Contrast. Looks best in neutral colours and monochromatic looks (Different tints, tones and shades of the same colour)
Coloured Hair (Strawberry Blond), Coloured Skin (Tan , A little Florid), Coloured Eyes (Bright Blue) – High Colour contrast. Looks great with lots of colours worn together or in multi-coloured prints.
Coloured Hair (Red), Coloured Skin (Golden Beige), Neutral Eyes (Grey) – Medium Colour Contrast. Looks great with 2 colours worn with neutrals or 2 colours in prints worn with neutrals.
If you change your hair colour or skin colour (fake or real tan) or even your eye colour (contact lenses), needless to say you can easily change your colour contrast level. In the pictures above you can see that Kelly Osbourne went from a fairly low colour contrast level to a much higher colour contrast level allowing her to wear more colour in her makeup and clothes.
I have only discussed colour contrast in this article. There is also your contrast value which also needs to be taken into consideration when putting an outfit together.
For example even though Kelly Osbourne is a low colour contrast in the first picture, her contrast value is high as her skin tone is very light and her hair colour is very dark. This means she looks best in high contrast combinations of neutral colours like black and white but does best to stick to 1 colour such as red.
Can you work out your colour contrast level? Send me a picture if you are still struggling and I can help you with this.