Why having a colour palette is a help rather than a hindrance

AS A PERSONAL stylist and colour analyst based in Yorkshire, a lot of people tell me that they imagine having a colour palette to stick to would be restrictive rather than a helpful way of dressing. Why would they want to take colours out of their wardrobes, and in particular the staples of black and white - unless you are in the Winter season, in which case they’ll be your basics - and be tied to a set number of colours?

A cohesive colour palette

Well, for starters, please don’t think that having a ‘season’ in colour analysis terms will restrict the number of colours you can wear. We can see millions of colours, and if for example, only a quarter -ish of those are cool summer hues, then that’s still 100,000s of colours that will suit you the best as a summer season, and make you feel your best too. Many thousands of these colours will be ones you have not considered wearing before, so you are opening yourself up to a huge amount of new and inspiring colours that are super flattering to you.

Secondly, the best thing about knowing your colour palette is that all those 100,000s of shades are going to go with each other perfectly. So, for example, every blue in the summer seasonal palette will harmonise perfectly with every pink in the summer seasonal palette, and every summer red will harmonise with every summer grey, and vice-versa. You have a ready-made palette of thousands and thousands of colours that all go together perfectly because they all share the same qualities in terms of the hues.

And that is the point of the seasonal colour palettes in seasonal colour analysis, and how they are decided upon - all the colours in that palette have very similar qualities - for summer that is cool, muted and soft, for Spring that is warm, clear and light, for Autumn, warm, muted and rich, and for Winter, vibrant, cool and intense. Every single colour we can see sits largely in one of these palettes, and is either cool or warm, although in the case of a certain number of colours, they are neutral, and can therefore sit within two or more palettes. There is also a great pure red and pure teal, for example, that work for all four seasons.

The Summer colour palette in seasonal colour analysis

So, knowing your colour palette means that you can be very easily creative with colour combinations without having to use those colour wheel rules that you hear about on social media and Youtube all the time - i.e. analogous colours or contrasting colours. Because you can legitimately combine any combination of colours in any way you please, and it will work!

However, if you want to be ultra intentional with your colour palette, you can develop it to feel really personal to you, and to feel like you are expressing yourself in the most authentic and accurate way. You can pick your favourite darker neutrals from your palette - in the case of my Spring palette my favourites are bright navy and tan (nothing is very dark in the Spring palette), add them to your favourite lighter neutrals (in my case ivory and peach-y shades) - and then bring in a limited number of colours with more personality to curate a limited colour palette that you feel really comfortable with and that you know suits you the very best. I tend to stick to the coral / pink / tangerine side of the Spring colour palette rather than the turquoise and aqua or green side, because they feel really aligned with my skin-tone and the colours I am most drawn to.

These more restricted colour palettes can be a good way of thinking about workwear, and also when packing for holiday and you have limited space and need everything to be able to work together harmoniously. But it can also save a lot of time and effort in making new purchases, because you automatically know which of these limited colours you are missing where in your wardrobe, so it can be a way to more intentional / lowkey / low spend wardrobe that ultimately most of us want. Don’t forget you can change this limited palette any time you want to, but it can be a useful tool to avoid confusion and time-wasting in a confusing world full of distractions.

The colours you wear should make you feel joyous and very much ‘yourself’, and a mindful colour palette is a great way to achieve this.

Colourfully, Jenny