Colour Properties by imogenl featuring short dresses
Every color has 3 unique properties. When you are finding colours that suit you, you are looking for those colours that replicate your natural color properties.
Value
The lightness to darkness of the color. You can change a color from it’s natural pure (rainbow) hue by:’
- Tint – adding white
- Shade – adding black
Some colours are natuarlly light in value - yellow is always light. Some are deep in value – indigo is always deep.
You can change a color by adding white or black to make it lighter or darker.
Undertone
How warm or cool the undertone of the color appears. Colours have both overtones and undertones.
Overtone – how we describe the color psychologically – we describe yellow, orange and red as warm (overtone) because they relate to things that make us feel hot – the sun and fire. We describe blue and green as cool (overtone) as they relate to things that make us feel cool – water, cool lush foliage that shades us from the sun.
The Undertone of the color is how the color is created – when mixing colours to create that unique hue. Every color (except orange) can have a warm or cool undertone by adding yellow or blue (or sometimes white or black will cool down a colour, and sometimes red will warm a color up)
Warmth (yellow base) or coolness (blue base)
Intensity
The intensity of a color is all about the saturation and brightness of it. It may be pure and bright, with little or no gray added or a tone – adding gray in higher amounts.
The brighter the colour, the more advancing it appears. The more muted/greyed down/toned the colour, the softer and smokier and more receding it appears.
When you’re selecting colours to wear, if you discover your own color properties and work with them, you’ll find that the colours harmonise with you and create a face focus.
For instance, my colouring is cool, deep and fairly bright – so the colours I wear have these color properties. It’s not that I can’t wear light colours, but I need to wear something darker with my lighter colours.
