Once you understand color, it’s relatively easy to create a wardrobe where every item makes you look your best and ties in well with each other. It can be extremely rewarding and, once you understand which colors suit you, you can start to add in others and still look great!

Understand that color is based on seasons and every person’s coloring can be described as a season. There are two characteristics that determine which season’s palette that you can best wear: warm or cool and clear or muted. If your coloring is warm and muted you are a “spring”, if you are cool and clear you are a “winter”, warm and clear is “autumn” and cool and muted is “summer.”

Realize that warm skin tones tend to have yellow undertones, while cool ones have blue. These undertones are very subtle and often difficult to see but if you have quite golden skin or appear sallow then you are warm. Blue undertones can often be seen as red cheeks or slight ruddiness.

Learn that if your coloring is clear then it will probably be one of your most noticeable features. You will have a large contrast between your hair, skin and eyes and your skin will have a slight translucent quality. If you are muted, however, there will be a less noticeable contrast and you may have some ash tones in your coloring. Your coloring will probably be softer than that of a clear person.

Find out which colors belong to your season’s particular palette. You will probably be able to find out whether a color suits you if it has the same characteristics as are found in your coloring. If you are a spring, you will suit warm, clear colors, such as salmon or lime. Winters can wear cool, clear colors such as black, white and navy blue. Autumns can best wear warm, muted colors like olive green or terracotta and summers look best in cool, muted colors such as burgundy or pastels. Most people are naturally drawn to their best colors so this can also be an indication.

Realize that many people can wear colors from another palette that shares characteristics with their own season’s palette. You can work out which of these colors you can wear by deciding whether you are (if you are a spring) most noticeably warm or clear. If you are predominantly clear, for example, you will also be able to wear many winter colors. Someone who was warm and clear, predominantly clear, would be a spring-winter.

If you are not sure that you are warm or cool coloration? Use the “Gold and Silver Test”. In front of a mirror, put a piece of metallic gold fabric or paper near your face, then do the same with a metallic silver piece of fabric or paper. (You can also do this with the back of your arm, especially if you have a tan). One should be much more flattering than the other. If you are flattered by gold, you’re a warm. Silver flatters cooler coloration.

Quick color reference guide:

o Fair skin, try grey
o Beige skin, try blue
o Golden skin, try green
o Bronze skin, try orange
o Deep skin, try red or pink

If you want to wear a color that is not in your seasonal palette, the best way to do this would be to wear it while having one of your best colors with it. This works with most colors. For example, a spring could wear a grey that was not usually her best color if she uplifted it with say, a warm, jewel green top.

You don’t necessarily have to totally ban any color in your wardrobe, even if it clashes with your complexion. What’s most important tends to be what’s near your face. So, if you love bubble-gum pink, but it simply doesn’t match your coloration, you can still wear a pink skirt, or enjoy pink handbags, shoes, and so on…just avoid it as a shirt color.Realize no single color is entirely “off-limits” due to your coloring. It often depends on the hue, color make-up and so on of the garment. You might look horrible in a mustard but radiant in a pastel yellow, for instance.

Although many colors can appear to be warm or cool, this describes the undertone so it is this you should look for. For example, true red can seem to be a warm color but it has a blue undertone which gives it its dramatic quality and so it is a winter color, rather than a spring color.These are just general guidelines—every once in a while, a color that isn’t supposed to look good on you will somehow look fabulous anyway. If it does, wear it…as long as others with good taste agree with your assessment!

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