By now, you’ve surely heard (or at least seen all over your FYP) everyone talking about a special method aimed to help you figure out your personal color palette. We’re of course talking about color analysis.
With close to 300,000 posts alone under the hashtag, we’re all trying to figure out what season we fall under and what colors we should and shouldn’t be playing with. (ICYWW, I’m a proud cool winter). But these professional consults are expensive, with sessions costing hundreds of dollars. How can one participate in the latest color theory trend when on a strict budget? Is that even possible?
The short answer to that is yes; there is a way to figure out your color season without having to spend the big bucks. Below, we speak with Haejin Suh, color consultant and founder of Omyo Color Studio in Los Angeles, California about everything you need to know about color analysis and how you can do a DIY consultation on yourself from the comfort of your own home. Read on to learn more.
What Is Color Analysis?
Color analysis is the process of figuring out what shades and undertones work best with your skin tone. As Suh explains it, it starts with the idea that color has multiple different characteristics. Based on how those characteristics bring out your best features or work against them is how you’ll figure out which colors are meant for you.
“If we were to ask our friends to wear their favorite red lipstick to a dinner, we’d notice people wearing various shades of red,” she says. “This is where we break down the colors into different factors: 1. hue (warm vs. cool), 2. brightness (light vs. dark), 3. saturation (vivid vs. less intense), and 4. muted (mixed with gray vs. mixed with white, black, or none of). In short, color analysis uses fabric to determine which of these factors are the most important in creating harmony and evenness with your natural color characteristics (skin tone, eye color, hair color) and facial features.”
The Color Breakdowns
Color analysis studios may differ on how they break down their different color charts. At Suh’s studio, Omyo Color Studio, she uses the Practical Color Coordinate System (PCCS). Developed by the Japan Color Research Institute, PCCS characterizes colors into hues (warm and cool), grayscale (light and dark), and the saturation or intensity of the shade.
She says the four seasons—winter, spring, summer, and fall—are divided into warm and cool color palettes. Spring and autumn have warm colors mixed with yellow while summer and winter have cool colors mixed in (think blue or sometimes less yellow). She breaks it down as the following:
- Spring Warm: light and vivid colors
- Summer Cool: light and muted colors
- Autumn Warm: muted and deep colors
- Winter Cool: icy, vivid, and deep colors
Depending on the colors that work best for you, she says you may have overlapping seasons (for example, if you love light colors, you can overlap between spring and summer). But the point of a color analysis is to narrow down your choices of go-to shades that will become your personal palette.
What to Expect During a Professional Consultation
First, color consultants will remove any makeup you might have on and cover your head if you’ve dyed your hair. Those who wear colored contacts will also be asked to remove those to reveal your natural eye color and give you the most accurate results.
Next is the fabric draping where you’ll try on various colors categorized within the four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. Within those fabrics, colors will consist of different hues, brightness, and saturation. Suh says that the color consultant will drape fabrics in front of the client to determine the difference between flattering colors that even out your skin tone and define your facial features versus the ones that create dark shadows or bring out extra pigments that won’t be as flattering. This will help you determine your best color palette into one (sometime two) season.
How long a session lasts and how much it costs varies depending on the studio. She says that most consultations can be anywhere between an hour to 120 minutes. Omyo Color Studio offers a 90-minute consultation for one person at $230. Two clients can come in at the same time for $175 per person for a 110-minute session. Three clients are listed at $130 per person for 120 minutes.
But the best part is that it works across all skin tones—anyone can do a session (if their budget allows). “Color analysis is inclusive and every individual receives personalized attention and tailored recommendations with a deep-seated understanding of diverse skin tones and undertones,” she says.
How to Do a Color Analysis at Home
Professional color analysis is definitely a splurge. But if you don’t want to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a consultation, it’s totally possible to do a very basic version on your own.
First, Suh says that you’ll want to try on clothes to see if you have a stronger preference for warm colors over cool tones, or vice versa. Then, while standing in front of a mirror with natural sunlight, she recommends gathering your more neutral tone clothes and placing them right under your neck to see when your skin is the most even. Here, you will compare warm and cool neutral tones with similar light and dark tones.
What are warm and cool neutral tones? An easy way to figure that out is as follows: she says that beige, ivory, tan, chocolate brown and dark brown neturals are considered warm colors. Pure white, milk white, heather gray, medium gray, charcoal, navy, and black are your cool shades. So when you’re comparing warm versus cool, she says you’ll want to be looking at how ivory compares to pure white, tan versus gray, chocolate brown versus charcoal gray, and dark brown versus black. “Your best colors should not bring out extra redness [and] dullness [or] make you look sallow,” she says. “[They should also not] create dark shadows around the eyes, mouth, and cheeks.”
If you happen to be more neutral between warm and cool tones, she recommends focusing on how dark colors look on you versus light. If dark colors add too much shadow then you might benefit from lighter shades, for example.
There are also ChatGPT options you can turn to, but she says to be wary of them. After experimenting with one of the online programs herself to see if it would align with her best colors, she ended up being assigned two out of the four seasons and a final recommendation that read: “Ultimately, while these suggestions provide a starting point, the best way to determine personal colors is through a professional color analysis session, which takes all individual nuances into account.”
“I definitely agree with this statement,” she says. “Using AI and ChatGPT can be a great starting point to learn about different color palettes. But with the current technology, they cannot be used in place of an in-person [session].”
