Answering another lovely reader's question about how to work with a limited colour palette, Jill Chivers of Shop Your Wardrobe and I took up the challenge to help demystify and share our secret sauce on the subject.
Use a Limited Range of Colours
Is it really limited or is it a select range of colours?
It depends how you look at it!
Many people who don't ascribe to the theory of personal colour analysis (they always say "you can wear any colour" and of course you can, it just may not make you look good), feel that even a colour palette of 50000 colours is too limited for them.
As you're aware I am a firm believer in personal colour analysis and wearing a palette of colours that flatters. I see daily just how much wearing colours that harmonise with your appearance really bring out the best in you. There is a science behind personal colour analysis (it's definitely not all hooey or mumbo jumbo) because colour is reflected light, and your skin is made up of different pigments, from the melanin to the carotene and how we see the haemoglobin.
Just like in interior decorating when some colours look better together. Your colouring (hair, eyes, skin) looks better with some colours rather than others.
Jill Chivers and I discussed in this post about how she likes to limit her colours, even within her palette and we've been asked by a reader just how to work with a smaller, more select palette of colours.
How to Work with a Select Range of Colours
What is Jill's secret? Animal Prints, they can work as a multiple neutral element to an outfit, and also giving the outfit more variety and even a textural quality to the outfit and colours.
What's my secret? Use both light and dark versions of any colour - there are many variations of a colour, you don't need limit yourself to just one specific shade of a colour.
Limiting your palette may actually expand your options - as all the colours you wear work together.
So rather than having less outfits to wear you may end up with way more!
Another option is to use patterned items that include your range of colours in a multi-coloured garment - you can then mix it back with neutrals plus a range of your select range of colours.
If you want to know what your best select colours are, then why not join my 7 Steps to Style program which includes discovering your best colours with my professional help.
