How to find your color palette for clothes

You can do a good first pass at home in about 20 minutes with a mirror, daylight and a few clothes you already own.

Step 1: find your undertone

Your undertone is the colour under the surface of your skin. It stays the same whether you're pale or tanned.

• Warm: golden, peachy or yellow cast. Gold jewellery tends to look better than silver.
• Cool: pink, rosy or bluish cast. Silver tends to look better than gold.
• Neutral: a mix, or hard to tell. You can usually wear a wider range, and your other two qualities decide more.

Test: in daylight, with a bare face, hold something camel or orange under your chin, then something icy pink or blue-grey. The undertone that suits you makes your skin look smooth and even. The wrong one brings out shadows, redness or a sallow look.

Step 2: check your depth and contrast

Look at your hair, eyebrows, eyes and skin together.

• Light: everything is fairly pale, like fair skin with light hair and light eyes.
• Deep: dark hair and eyes, and often medium to deep skin.
• High contrast: a big gap between features, for example very dark hair with fair skin.
• Low contrast: features close in depth.

Light, low-contrast colouring looks best in lighter colours worn close together. Deep or high-contrast colouring can carry darker shades and bold pairings, like black with white.

Step 3: clear or soft

Hold a pure, bright colour (a clear red or royal blue) and then a greyed version of a similar hue (brick, dusty blue). If the bright one makes your eyes sparkle, you suit clear colours. If it seems to wear you and the softer one looks natural, you suit muted colours.

Step 4: put it together

The three answers point to one of four seasons:

| Undertone | Depth | Softness | Season | |---|---|---|---| | Warm | Light | Clear | Spring | | Cool | Light | Soft | Summer | | Warm | Deep | Soft | Autumn | | Cool | Deep | Clear | Winter |

Many analysts divide each season into three (for example light, true and soft summer), giving twelve palettes, based on which of your qualities is strongest. If you land between two seasons, the one whose colours you were drawn to in Step 1 is usually the better start.

Our guides to the summer, autumn and spring palettes list colours and hex codes for each.

Use a photo to see your own colours

The colour tool on this page can read a photo. Take a selfie in daylight by a window, with no filter and no make-up, and drop it in. It picks out the main colours as hex codes: your skin, hair and eyes, plus whatever is behind you, so crop to your face first.

The photo stays in your browser; nothing is uploaded. Then:

• Put your skin swatch next to the warm and cool test colours from Step 1. Seeing them side by side makes the undertone easier to judge.
• Click your hair or eye colour to make it the base. The tool shows colours that go with it, which often make good accent colours to wear.
• Copy the palette as hex codes and take it shopping, or paste it into a notes app.

Phone cameras adjust white balance and screens vary, so treat the colours as a guide, not a diagnosis.

Using your palette for a dress or outfit

• Near your face: wear your best colours here. Tops, scarves, collars and dresses matter most.
• Neutrals: pick two or three from your season (for example camel and cream for autumn, soft navy and grey for summer) and build around them.
• One accent: a single brighter colour from your palette keeps an outfit from looking flat.

For a single dress or special-occasion outfit, choose the main colour from your palette first, then accessories in a neighbouring or neutral shade.

How reliable is this?

Seasonal colour analysis is a styling framework that became popular through books like Color Me Beautiful (1980). It isn't a science, there's no standard training for analysts, and different systems draw the lines in different places. It's still a useful way to narrow down what to try. Trust what you see in the mirror over any label.