When you’re seeking to look your best, one of the first things you’ll want to determine is which colors look best on you.  Which colors best repeat and highlight the colors that are present in you?

To sort that out, we have to learn a little about color first.  Each color has three primary traits:

• Its hue; that is, the actual color.  This is where we’ll typically address the color’s “temperature” – how “warm” or “cool” it is.*
• Its depth.  That is, how light or dark it is.
• Its saturation.  That is, how clear/strong is the color?

*All traits of color are relative, but color temperature is especially so.  We’re looking for warm or cool in relation to human skin, or in relation to the color itself (i.e. a warm blue vs. a cool blue).

What is Saturation?

When a color is as saturated as possible, it is pure hue.  It would be pure pigment in the world of paints, dyes, etc.  So a fully-saturated red would be as red as it could possibly be.  A fully-saturated blue would be as blue as possible.  A fully-saturated green would be as green…you get the idea.  We may also, in the world of style/fashion, refer to these colors as having the highest possible clarity, so these are our “clear” colors.

A color is muted by adding either some form of black/white/grey –  “diluting” the hue, in a sense – or by adding its complement, thus “muddying” it, in a sense.

If you imagine taking bright red paint, and adding these various other paints to it, you can also see another feature of color at play: all the traits of a given color are inter-connected, so when you change one, you change the others, however subtly.  If you add black to red, you’re “shading” it.  This will mute it (some), but it will also darken it.  If you add white, you’re “toning” it – which will mute it (again, some), but also lighten it.

If you add grey, the color will be muted (probably more effectively than with black or white); the lightening or darkening effect will probably be negligible.  (Sometimes in the color world, when “muted” colors are mentioned, the speaker is specifically referring to colors with grey added.)  If you add red’s complement, green, you will mute the color, but you will also be impacting the color’s temperature.

What Does that Mean for You?

As you determine which colors are best for you, one of the questions you’ll need to answer is whether you look better in clear colors or muted ones.  Many style systems leave out an option I think is important, though – something in-between.  Maybe you don’t need the highest clarity or super-muted colors, but a middle ground.

After we’ve discussed the other two traits of color, we’ll talk more about how to recognize the right clarity, but a couple major clues are that colors that are too clear will tend to overpower you and/or reflect on your face (that is, they’ll make your face look the same color as the clothing); colors that are too muted might wash you out or make you look kind of grey.