A few years ago, I came across the concept of colour analysis and was intrigued. We all know that we suit certain colours and others don’t work quite so well for us, but I never knew that there was a whole colour theory behind it.
Time for a chatty post again, like it used to be 5 years ago I guess! Weirdly it feels a bit odd to do this now, especially as I spend a lot of my time writing polished content for clients, whereas the posts I’ve always done here have been a bit of a brain dump!
I’m sure you’ve figured out from the title already which colour season I turned out to be: Jewel Winter! But let me tell the whole story of how I found that out.
As I said, I came across the idea of finding out your own part of the palette a while back, but it was after having Archie that I felt a bit lost with my personal style. While I’ve often veered more towards retro style clothing, I wouldn’t say I’ve ever had a defined personal style – which is fine, not everyone does! But I was really struggling to put together outfits that I liked – stuck in a rut of leggings and grey shades and comfy clothes, a lot of warm tones (which I now know weren’t my best!), and not much colour at all. At the beginning of 2024, Ben and I kicked off on a bit of a health journey (a whole other story for another day!) – it had been around 6 years at this point that I’d been either pregnant or breastfeeding, so I was wearing a lot of “temporary” clothes for this purpose and nothing that I really loved. My body started changing when we changed our diets and lifestyle, somewhat back to what it used to be, but also somewhat changed by the past few years, so I knew now was the time to make a decision to find out more about what would make me feel my best before I made the investment in a new wardrobe.
The best way to learn more about your own colour palette is to see an expert. I tried the online colour season tests, the TikTok filters, the whole “check the colour of your veins in your wrist and the colours of your eyes” thing. As it turns out, I apparently can’t tell the difference between green and blue on my own wrist as I was convinced they were showing as a warm green. Anyway, the point is supposed to be that this “test” tells you if you have cool undertones or warm undertones, but it doesn’t always work out that way!
After talking non-stop about colour theory and the different seasons for so long, my parents bought me a House of Colour voucher as a Christmas gift. I decided to choose a House of Colour consultant called Lizi Green who runs House of Colour York. Not only was she my nearest colour season consultant, but after a bit of research (ie. stalking her Instagram), I decided she looked like she’d be a good fit for me – after all, I was going to spend basically an entire day with her as I decided to do both the Colour and Style Analysis in one day package. This was 6.5 hours, and at around £600 was a bit of an investment, but I felt it was worth it so I didn’t end up spending the same amount on clothes that I didn’t like in the end!
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I’ll mostly just talk about the colour season part of the experience today, but before I arrived, Lizi sent over a questionnaire to inform her more about what I wanted to get out of the session and the direction we would take. I also sent over some photos of previous outfits I’d liked and disliked on me – thankfully due to blogging my outfits for many years, I had plenty to share! Here’s a selection of a few I liked, but I also let her know that I wanted to fit more with my lifestyle nowadays.
The appointment was in March 2024, so I was still early in my new health kick, but already seeing changes (which I can thankfully say have stuck around 18 months later!). The House of Colour consultation took place in a studio in Lizi’s kitchen in York – this was a beautiful room with big windows for plenty of natural light. The levels of light are very important to see the difference on individual skin tone, bright eyes and more.
The first thing we did was to look at my hair. I’ve dyed and highlighted my hair many times over the years, the most recent before my House of Colour experience was an attempt at rose gold hair which came out a much more vibrant pink with darker roots – I think the hairdresser did me a favour here as this probably actually suited my colour season before I even knew it better than the warm rose gold would have done! While the pink was long since washed out, the balayage bleached ends were still there and, as bleached hair tends to do, had turned a warmy, brassy colour. Lizi looked closely at my roots to determine the cool tones of my natural dark hair colour, then covered up the rest of my hair with the lovely white bonnet that you can see in my final photo below! This is to make sure that the unnatural warm tones didn’t sway the way that the colour swatches reacted against my skin.
This was the next step, and the most fun – the colour swatches! Lizi wheeled around a trolley with a beautiful rainbow of fabrics. With a little bit of flourish, she draped a variety of the swatches across my shoulders and watched how they interacted with my own skin tone. She explained what she was doing with each one and what she was looking for as I watched in the mirror. There were certain things to look out for, such as how the whites of the eyes look brighter or duller, areas of redness that were more visible in some shades, how your eye colour would “pop” in some colours but not in others. The colour science was fascinating, and as I learned, it’s not something that you can tell just by looking at a person.
So while you might know that you’re either warm or cool toned, these split down into four main seasons – Autumn and Spring are the warm seasons, Winter and Summer are the cool seasons. The difference between the two warm and the two cool seasons is the vibrancy, the brightness of their look – for example, the seasonal palette of winter colours are saturated and vibrant, whereas the best colours for summer are more muted.
And finally once that is determined, your consultant picks out your best colours which helps to determine a seasonal subtype – there are three seasonal subtypes in each of the colour seasons. I’m finding it a little tricky to define what seasonal sub-type means, but this Instagram post from another HOC consultant might help – this shows the four winter subseasons: Jewel, Sultry, Burnished and Sprinter:
The top colours for me were those that were classic for a Jewel Winter: a bright fuchsia, emerald green, electric blue, and more. I learned that I am one of the only colour seasons that can wear true and bright white and also black – that is because winters need a high contrast level, whether that’s deep winters or a dark winter or a bright winter. There are also icy shades in the overall winter palette, but most of these ended up not being “wow” colours for me as much as the brighter jewel tones. But it’s in the mixing all these shades together that you really get to have fun with the winter palette!
The session included a section specifically on make up to suit your newly discovered colour season, with a mini makeover included! I ended up buying the foundation that Lizi matched to my skin – I used to use a mineral powder but this is a liquid formula in a shade specifically for my own skintone. One thing I especially loved was the lip colours – Lizi tried a gorgeous bright pink on me which I now use every time I want to wear make up. It’s very saturated so I usually tone it down a little by only dabbing it on, but it’s the perfect shade for me.
We also looked at hair colours. As a result, I’m letting my hair grow out to its natural dark shade now. I have in the past year also dyed the rest of my hair to match my roots and added some silvery highlights too. While I could decide to have blonde hair, to suit my colour season best, it would need to be free of yellow tones and instead be more icy.
So the overall colours of the winter palette have blue undertones and one thing I’ve realised is that I gravitate towards bright blues a lot nowadays – it somehow makes a good neutral base for an outfit for me, even though it’s really the opposite!
Did I think this was the colour season that I’d be “sorted” into? Honestly, no! I had placed myself in just about every colour season using online tests so I was completely lost, but my wardrobe was full of muted warm colours – I used to wear a lot of olive green! I probably would have placed myself as a dark autumn if you’d have pushed me. I do have naturally fair skin, dark hair and green eyes, so I think if you’d have asked someone impartially, they’d say that winter makes sense for me, but I just wasn’t sure.
I don’t always wear colours from my season religiously. In the summer season, I’ve found that I’ve occasionally gravitated more towards lighter shades that don’t have such high levels of contrast, but I tend to stick to cool tones nowadays so while I may not be within the classic winter palette, I’m still matching my cool undertones.
I’m still learning too – I’m discovering that there are tonal directions your palette can take, such as whether it’s light, deep, soft and more. Lizi explained how she’s a summer, areas of the winter palette touch closely to this so we could suit similar colours but the tonality would be different (I think I’ve got that terminology right!)
I think I’ll leave it at that today, but I plan to share more of my Jewel Winter outfits in coming posts, so I’ll see you seen with those!
