Have you ever looked inside your wardrobe and wondered what you can wear, or what you can pair together?
You may have a collection of neutral tops or neon clothing, which aren’t colors that work well together. To make stylish outfits, you need to create a wardrobe color palette.
It is crucial you think about what you need from your wardrobe, and develop a wardrobe full of clothes which you can mix and match together easily.
This can be done by making a color palette, but this color palette doesn’t have to be boring either.
In this article, we will discuss the 5 easy methods you could follow to create the perfect wardrobe color palette for yourself.
Why Should You Create A Color Palette?
Color can reveal a lot about you and even provoke particular feelings. Therefore, it is important to give priority to selecting a color scheme that you will live by.
In light of this, your entire wardrobe and style should be an adventure. Since your design and color scheme will change over time, you must craft your color palette today. Thus, you can develop it as your style changes
Method 1: Skin Tones And Undertones
While this method will take a little more time as you figure out your skin tone and undertones, it can prove to be the most beneficial.
Once you understand your skin tone, you are able to work out which colors are more suited to your skin and which colors you should stay away from.
Skin Tones
Your life experiences might have an impact on your skin tone, which is the color of your skin’s outer layer. Your skin tone may fluctuate due to a variety of factors, including aging, hormones, tanning, and sun exposure.
However, there are commonly 6 categories that describe skin tone:
- Fair – Quite pale and don’t tan at all. Your skin usually burns quite easily.
- Light – Part of the beige family and will have a hint of color. You may slightly freckle or tan when in the sun.
- Medium – You can tan quite easily and have a bit of pigment in your skin.
- Tan – Usually, you will have a light brown or olive complexion. You may look naturally tanned or can tan quite quickly.
- Rich – This is known as a medium brown or dark olive complexion.
- Deep/Dark – Tanning may subtly impact your skin. You will have a rich and dark complexion.
Undertones
Your undertone can be divided into four different undertone options and two general categories: warm or cold hues.
Your undertones are a key factor in choosing the accent colors and color tones that will make up a harmonious color palette for you because they won’t change.
The four main types of undertones are:
- Cool,
- Neutral,
- Olive,
- Warm.
Now, because olive tones are primarily green and green is a cool color, they are typically classified as belonging to the cool family.
However, when skin undertone is divided into the four basic categories, those with olive tones are classified as having olive undertones.
This is because their undertones don’t respond well to certain cool color palettes.
It is crucial to understand that your ethnicity has no bearing on your undertone. Therefore, regardless of your race, you must perform the following methods to figure out your undertone.
Determining Your Undertone
It can be a little tricky to work out what kind of undertone you possess. Thankfully, there are a couple of methods which you can try yourself to be able to work this out.
You might be neutral-toned if none of these tests show any clear results. All people have a mixture of both cool and warm tones, but most people will usually have a more dominant undertone family.
Also, it is important to bear in mind that people with neutral tones have an equal distribution of warm and cold tones.
Try one or all of the following tests to determine what your undertones are.
- Metal Method – Using natural sunlight, place silver and gold jewelry on your wrist/skin. Determine which accessory flatters you the most and which one brings out the tone of your skin the most evenly. If wearing gold jewelry makes you look your best, you probably have warm skin. Silver jewelry will look best on you if your undertones are cooler.
- Vein Method – Examine the veins on the inside of your wrist while it is bright outside. You are cool-toned if they are primarily purple or blue. Yet, you are considered warm-toned if they are primarily green. However, if you have veins of different colors, this test could be difficult to understand. You can belong to the neutral family if you possess both greenish and blue veins.
- Paper Method – Place a pure white piece of paper or a towel near to your face for this test. For the best results, avoid wearing makeup and only use natural sunshine. You possess cool undertones if your skin seems more blue, crimson, or pink. While, you may have warmer undertones if your skin seems more golden, peachy, or yellow.
Method 2: Universal Colors
This might be the simplest but least effective method for choosing the colors for your clothing. Colors that are thought to look nice on almost everyone are known as universal colors.
While these colors can be an excellent place to start, a more personalized palette might better accent or improve your appearance.
Having said that, if you’re pressed for time and need a place to start, these common hues can inspire your palette. This includes the following colors:
- White,
- Taupe,
- Turquoise,
- Eggplant,
- Black,
- Navy Blue,
- Red,
- Teal,
- Periwinkle.
Pastel pink is a highly debated color, since some people believe it shouldn’t be included. Thus, you can make our own judgment call on this color.
The lack of a strong emphasis on either warm or cool undertones makes these hues seen as universal.
They therefore often complement the majority of skin tones. However, some of these hues might not be the greatest choice for you based on your skin tone.
Taupe, for example, might look great on people who don’t have excessively cool or warm undertone skin.
Although, since they go well with so many various skin tones, universal colors are frequently utilized for bridesmaid gowns and uniforms.
The universal color palette may therefore be a useful place to start when creating a color palette for your wardrobe.
These colors are a great base, which you can then expand on to add your own unique style to.
Method 3: Find Inspiration And Be Unique
Although your closet could be a terrific place to get color inspiration, a jumbled up closet might make it difficult to use. Alternatively, if your personal style is in the midst of a transition, this can be difficult to create a personal color palette.
A nice place to start is by employing a color generator and looking for outside style inspiration.
The best place to start is going on Pinterest. Here you can create a new board, and add colors or outfits that you like. In addition to this, you should add images of outfits that you love to wear.
Once you have gotten all of these images you can create a collage, by downloading the images and using a program such as canvas to make a collage.
Then with this collage you can upload it to a color palette generator, which will create a unique color palette for you.
You can use this color palette as a starter to begin building your new wardrobe or use it to add a new lease of life to your old and confused wardrobe.
Method 4: Analyze Your Current Wardrobe
This method asks you to clean out your closet before you start. This is a great chance to sort through all the clothes you do and don’t wear anymore. Then any clothes that you don’t wear anymore can be donated or sold.
Now that your closet is tidy, you can begin your analysis. Open your closet so you can see all of your clothing clearly then take a picture of it. Take lots of different shots of your clothing and wardrobe. This is helpful, if you can’t take one image that includes everything clearly.
Then, once you have all your images, crop out any unwanted background. If you have multiple images, then we would advise you to make a collage, so everything is on one page or screen.
Once you have done this, you can upload this image to a color tone app, which will generate a color palette that matches your current wardrobe. However, it isn’t always perfect, so you can swap out colors. Otherwise, you can look at the images yourselves and see which colors feature the most often.
It may be worth completing this exercise every couple of months or for each season. This way you can see what you wear the most at that time of year and how your wardrobe color palette changes slightly.
Method 5: Structured Color Palette
This method is often used when constructing capsule wardrobe palettes. Thus, this wardrobe contains a limited amount of interchangeable pieces of clothing that can complement each other really well.
If you are building a wardrobe up from scratch or trying out capsule wardrobes, then this method will be one of the easiest for you to follow.
Building Up Colors
The ability to mix and match items with ease is the sign of a well-balanced closet. You need some base colors and neutrals to accomplish this, even if you tend to wear bright clothing.
- Base Colors – These are usually, tan, black, and navy. Sometimes white can be included here as well.
- Neutral Colors – These are frequently referred to as supplemental colors or secondary neutrals. His includes taupe, gray, brown, olive, and tan.
After your base and neutral colors, we can go onto accent colors. These are another set of different colors, which you may add to your wardrobe. This can help make your wardrobe feel a bit more personal to you, and you can use colors that compliment your skin tone.
Adding Patterns And Textures
Once you have all your colors sorted out, you can think about the textures and patterns you wish to include in your wardrobe. There are a lot of options for you to choose from, but we would advise you to only stick to a handful of different textures or patterns.
Textures and patterns you could include are:
- Plaid,
- Leather.
- Pinstripe,
- Leopard,
- Denim,
- Paisley,
- Floral,
- Cable Knit.
If you fill your closet with too many patterns, it will probably feel disjointed. Your wardrobe’s color palette will suffer from an excessive number of additional colors being added.
Although textures might not have a direct impact on the color scheme of your wardrobe, they might influence how unified your closet is. Thus, it’s best to also limit your textures a little.
When To Add Metallics?
Metallics should only be utilized in small doses as accents to complete an outfit. Metallics are regarded as an outfit “highlight” similar to an accent color and should coordinate with your overall color scheme.
They are used more frequently as accessories made of metal or as jewelry.
Metallics are often:
- Copper,
- Rose Gold,
- Gold,
- Platinum,
- Silver,
- Bronze,
- Gunmetal.
Different Style Options
When creating a wardrobe color theme or capsule wardrobe color palette, there are a few important factors to keep in mind.
Consider how frequently you wear the different styles in your ensembles and alter your color scheme accordingly depending on your personal style and color preferences. For example, if you frequently mix prints and are good at it, your color palette in your wardrobe will include more than 2 to 3 patterns.
Below are a couple of things you should keep in mind, depending on your style.
Color Block Outfits
Without including black or white, color blocking is made up of solid colors that range from one to two hues.
It’s a terrific method for folks who want vibrant color palettes to create outfits that appear to be intentionally colorful.
This is an excellent choice even if your wardrobe contains a few items or colors that stand out.
Simply ensure that the colors are from the same family, pairing brights with other brights, muted hues with other muted colors, etc.
Monochromatic Outfits
Whenever you wear a single color from head to toe, your ensemble is considered monochromatic. Tonal dressing, which entails wearing many tones of one color, is a similar approach.
Thus, if you do this, you may find that your wardrobe contains a more limited number of color options, but there may be more tones of those colors as well.
Mixing Different Prints
You need to be careful when mixing and matching prints in one outfit. It is a great way to switch up your style, but it should be done carefully.
It is best to match different prints that contain similar colors. This way, you can still create a well put together outfit.
Conclusion
By creating a color palette for your wardrobe, you can create a wardrobe that is cohesive, which allows you to put outfits together more easily.
By following any of the 5 methods outlined above, you will be able to produce a color palette that is unique to you, with items that are versatile, which can be worn in multiple ways.
We hope this article has been helpful, and now you should be able to create your own wardrobe color palette in no time.
Frequently Asked Questions
When first creating your color palette, we would recommend that you start with one base color and a couple of neutrals. You can then add 2 to 3 accent colors and even 2 different prints or textures.
This is a great base, which you can expand upon as your style and color palette changes over time.
If you have any items of clothing that you don’t wear any more than these could be donated. Yet, if you have pieces which you still wear but now don’t fit in with your new color palette, you can still keep them.
In this case, put them to one side to be added to your color palette in the future.
Monochromatic color schemes or palettes are the easiest to complete. This is since they are different tones and shades of one color.
Thus, they always create flattering outfits as there are no contrasting colors that take away from the man color. However, you may not want to wear one color all the time.
My whole life, I have always been a little bigger than my friends. I was always a bit taller, wider and just bigger built. From my late teens, I would say that I was curvy. I really struggled to find clothes that fitted me, as my hips went out, but my chest didn’t really.
I created WarningCurvesAhead.com because I wanted other women to feel the sense of empowerment I have felt since changing up my wardrobe and finding out what clothes suit my body shape, skin tone and style.
I hope that you too can join me on this journey, and start making some amazing fashion choices that celebrate your beautiful body- instead of hiding it!
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