I’m beginning to suspect that not everyone is obsessed with all the minute and mathematical considerations involved in deciding what to want and wear. (What do you suppose … the eyes glazed over? the nervous laughter? no comments in my in-box?) So, in case anyone still reads this, this one’s for you: try combining cool colors with warm ones, rather than wearing all one or the other.
I realize this runs counter to the 1980s, Color Me Beautiful era, advice. But because most people have both cool and warm colors in their personal coloring, it works.
Some good cool/warm color combos:
- White with Brown (my current favorite)
- Charcoal Grey and Ivory
- Navy and Orange
- Black and Camel
- Red, White, and Blue
P.S. This post was originally written in 2005, in my first months of blogging. 🙂
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It’s interesting you talk about cool and warm and your examples are almost correct – but not quite.
You would most likely put a cool brown (say a deep rose brown, which has a slight pink tinge, or bitter dark chocolate ) with a white, whilst a warm milk chocolate brown will work better with ivory.
A marine navy (which has a little more yellow in it) looks fabulous with orange – because they are complimentary colours on the colour wheel.
Grey can be made either achromatically mixing only black and white, or chromatically by mixing all colours together to create a WARM grey – which will look great with ivory.
Ivory can be more like white, and cooler, or a little yellower and warmer.
Red can be warm or cool – add a little orange and get fire engine red, add a little blue and get cherry. Pick the warmer or cooler blue and you have a great mix.
The only colour that can’t be COOL is ORANGE.
The only colour that can’t be WARM is traditional PINK (add yellow and you create coral, peach, salmon, but not pure RED with WHITE).
BLACK is only ever cool, as is BRIGHT WHITE.
Other than that, there are warm and cool versions of every other colour on the colour wheel.
You will find colours that combine best are those that have similar colour qualities – and if you are interested in how personal colour analysis works – feel free to read my Newsletter http://www.bespokeimage.com.au/newsletter-may07.php which has a little more information on how it works.
To my eye, there are hard, cool blacks and some black is more like
lampblack and looks softer and slightly warmer to me.
But I think the whole idea of putting actual cool and warm colors
together is interesting. Perhaps generating a lot of tension in the
eye/outfit and good for punk, edgy clothing?
I think you are right about different blacks, or at least how they appear in different fabrics. Our pastor has very light coloring, but he looks right in his black suit: a very shiny, light black.
The difference, I think, between what Imogen is talking about and what I mean relates to psychological vs relative color temperature. That is, certain colors are always psychologically warm or cool, but they come in warmer or cooler variants. For example, blue is always perceived as cool, but a person with warm coloring looks better in a greener blue.
IMO, an all-cool or all-warm ensemble looks more dated than one that mixes the two, HOWEVER, I think that’s subject to the current fashion cycle. 😉