Robin Wright in a rare moment of colour – Google her style and see if you can find a recent photo of her in anything other than black, grey or white! 

In my day job I have run many seminars for the readers of design magazines.  If you give 30 readers the same design challenge and a clearly defined ‘client’, the majority propose a colour palette that they themselves are wearing – regardless what colours the ‘client’ is wearing!   I always have to point this out… people generally don’t realise that they already have a strong colour bias.

We all have a colour palette – so what’s yours? 

By identifying “your” colours you can begin to edit your existing wardrobe, and make selective new additions that will integrate and perform, instead of sitting unworn on the sidelines, provoking pangs of guilt.  You can avoid ”Oh, I like that!” shopping – spontaneous purchases for which there is no solid rationale, and which really aren’t going to be of any long-term use to you.

It is particularly helpful to know your colour palette when you shop online, when you can’t hold a garment up to your face to judge its impact on your complexion.

How to start:

• Look in your wardrobe, and pick out the clothes and accessories that you regularly wear. Write down their dominant colours in order, starting with the most common colour and ending with the least common.
• Think back to compliments you have received – what items of clothing / colours are you regularly told suit you?
• What colour are your eyes? This is very important, so take a close look.  Go beyond the dominant hue and identify the flecks of secondary colour in your irises that no one notices until you wear a garment in the same shade.
• Go shopping with a friend and, in the mirror, hold clothes in lots of different colours up to your face. Which colours make you look healthy and complement your colouring; which colours make you look washed out, sallow, ill, flushed, tired?
• Can you immediately think of any colours that you know bring out the worst in you – colours you must exclude from your list?

Are you being too cautious? Please don’t stick to the colours found in uniforms and business suits: we need accent colours to give outfits a lift.  Make sure you have at least one or two bright colours on your list.

Here is my palette:

I’m blonde with blue eyes. My skin has too much pink in it for rose or peach colours – they look awful on me.  My palette indicates which colours I wear more of and which play a supporting role.  My favourite colour is where grey meets teal – if I see a well-cut anything in this shade I’ll invariably buy it because I know it will be a winner.

Here’s a fun exercise for a rainy day.  Get hold of a comprehensive paint chart and cut out all the colours you have identified from the exercises above.  Cross-refer with your wardrobe to make sure that you have the colours exactly right – ‘nearly’ the right colour is not good enough!

Buy a sketchbook to record your personal style findings in.  Stick the paint cuttings into this book in order to create a record of the colour of clothes you will permit yourself to buy in in future.

Identifying your colour palette and sticking within it will help you to manage your shopping budget, pack for holidays, put outfits together and plan for events, and create a personal style that people associate with you – like a perfume – and admire you for.