How to Find the Colours That Suit You (Without Paying for Colour Analysis)

Colour analysis has had a remarkable revival. Seasons, undertones and draping sessions are all over social media, and a professional appointment can cost a surprising amount for an hour of having fabric held under your chin.

The good news is that the useful part of it works perfectly well at home, with a mirror, a window and the clothes already in your wardrobe. Treat it as a tool rather than a rulebook — nobody should stop wearing a colour they love because a chart said so — but knowing why some colours work on you and others don't is genuinely worth an afternoon.

What suits you actually means

A colour suits you when your face looks clearer, more even and more awake in it. Shadows under the eyes soften, skin looks smoother, and people notice you rather than what you're wearing.

A colour that doesn't suit you does the reverse. Shadows deepen, skin can look sallow, grey or flushed, and the garment arrives in the room slightly before you do. Once you've seen the difference side by side, it's hard to unsee.

Undertone: warm, cool or neutral

Your surface skin tone changes with the seasons and the sun. Your undertone — the hue underneath — mostly doesn't, and it's the first thing colour analysis looks at. There are a few quick home tests, none conclusive alone, so look for them to agree:

• Veins on the inside of your wrist, in daylight: greenish suggests warm, blue or purple suggests cool, and genuinely hard to call suggests neutral.
• Jewellery: if gold looks more natural against your skin, lean warm; if silver does, lean cool.
• White against cream: hold a bright white top and a cream one under your face. Cool undertones tend to suit the crisp white; warm ones look better in cream.

Contrast matters as much as colour

The part most people miss is contrast — the difference between your hair, your skin and your eyes. Dark hair with fair skin is high contrast; hair, skin and eyes in similar depths is low.

High-contrast people tend to carry stark combinations well: black with white, deep colours, strong prints. Low-contrast people often look better in tonal, softer outfits, where nothing jumps too far from anything else. If you've ever worn a colour you know suits you and still felt overpowered, the issue was probably contrast, not hue.

The mirror test, with your own wardrobe

Your wardrobe is already a swatch kit. All you need is a window and half an hour:

1. Stand facing natural daylight. Artificial light, especially warm bulbs, distorts everything.
2. Go bare-faced, or wear exactly the same make-up throughout, so you're judging colour rather than the make-up.
3. Cover what you're wearing with a plain grey or white towel round your shoulders.
4. Hold pieces under your chin one at a time. Look at your face, not the fabric — the eyes, the skin, the shadows.
5. Sort everything into yes, no and maybe. Then look at what the yes pile has in common: warm or cool, bright or soft, light or deep.

That common thread is your palette, and it's usually less narrow than the seasonal charts suggest. Most people find a dozen or so colours that reliably work and a few that reliably don't, with plenty of room in the middle.

“Colour near your face is a decision. Colour below the waist is a preference.”

— The Bestis Editors

Where the wrong colours can still go

A colour that drains you doesn't have to leave your life. It just has to move away from your face. Trousers, skirts, shoes and bags are where a colour you love but can't wear near your skin can live happily. A scarf or collar in one of your good colours between the two does the rest.

Test before you commit

The cheapest colour experiment there is is borrowing. Try a colour you've never worn for a week — at work, out, in different light — before you own anything in it. A week tells you more than any chart, because it shows you how the colour feels as well as how it looks.

And the no pile from your mirror test isn't waste. Every one of those pieces is exactly right for somebody with a different undertone or a different contrast. On Bestis, swap the colours that wash you out for the ones that make you look like you've slept, and let your circle tell you which is which.