Not all colors have the same effect on everyone. Some of us do not feel comfortable with certain colors. It's not because they're ugly colors. Even though some of us use the colors they like very much, they do not look good with these colors. So is there a secret about this?
Yes, there is a system that tells us which of all the colors it would be appropriate to use according to the hair, eye and skin color of the person. I will share the 12 seasons color charts required to use this magnificent system in the following pages. It is a very easy and enjoyable system. I have compiled it for those who are wondering what kind of path was followed in history until this classification was made. At the end of my article, you can find a section where I summarize the history of these studies.
12 Season Color Analysis
Now is the time to ask the mirror? Which are your colors?
Now is the time to ask the mirror? Which are your colors?
In this article, I will show you a very useful, easy and enjoyable method for choosing jewelry and clothes.
Think of yourself as a canvas on which you prepare the base color. Our base color is innate. This is our skin, eye and hair color. Of course, our skin color darkens when we sunbathe, we can dye our hair or change our eye color with colored lenses. However, the system you will learn a little later will help you 100% to distinguish the right colors, even when changing your hair color or buying colored lenses.
Matching is possible by using the right combinations of the right colors and shapes in harmony. So, let's first analyze the colors in our body and then determine our jewelry and clothing colors that will suit it.
Step 1: Are you warm or cool?: The first thing you will do is determine whether you have warm skin or cool skin. So how do you do this?
Colors are classified as warm and cool according to their intensity and the effects they have on people. Before doing this step, let's remember the warm and cool colors.
There are 3 main colors. All colors consist of a mixture of yellow (warm) and red (warm), blue (cool).
As you can see on the color wheel, yellow-red-orange are warm colors and blue-green-purple are cool colors.
We use different amounts of the 3 primary colors when mixing colors to get different colors. This gives us the possibility to obtain an infinite number of colors. Our use of predominantly warm or cool colors determines whether the character of the newly formed color is warm or cool. As the warm primary color in a color increases, the warm color occurs, and as the cool primary color increases, the cool color occurs. We can adjust the vividity and naturalness of these colors by adding gray (black + white) in different proportions.
Each color (hue) can be warm or cool in itself. This may sound a bit confusing, but to make it more understandible, let's see the warm and cool areas of the cool primary color blue.
Do the foundation test. Find out which one suits you by applying a yellow-based foundation to one side of your face and a pink-based foundation to the other. If you can't decide, get help from someone you trust. Pink means cool and yellow means warm.
Put on a fabric in gold tones and then silver tones (clothes, blankets, paper can also be used. The aim is to match) and find out which one is suitable for your skin tone. Apply this to both the sun-drenched and low-sun skin areas. Silver means cool and gold means warm.
The color of your veins also informs you whether you prefer warm colors or cool colors. If your veins are in green tones, you are in the warm group, and if they are in blue tones, you are in the cool group.
Using the table, determine whether you are in warm group colors or cool group colors according to your color weights.
Step 2: Are you light or dark?: By adding black to a color, we can get its dark values by adding white to its light values. As a canvas, your body also has a color value. You should choose compositions that are compatible with this base on you. So are you generally light or dark?
Step 3: Are you cool or warm? It's about how much you reflect the light.
A. Identify Your Dominant Features
Your dominant feature is your most prominent appearance feature. Choose this step carefully. Get help from those around you if needed. It is important to achieve realistic results in the 12 Seasons Color Chart.
1. Dark (Deep): Strong, rich, dark color. Dark hair and eyes. Skin color may be dark or light, be careful with that. It does not mean that the dominant feature of every darker-skinned person is dark. What matters here is the strong contrast between the features.
Contrast: The contrast between your skin tone, hair and eye color should be moderate or high.
Eyes: They can be black, blackish brown, reddish brown, brown, dark brown or hazel.
Hair: Very dark black, blackish brown, dark chestnut, light chestnut, auburn, rarely dark blonde.
In order for your dominant feature to be defined as dark; you should have body features that include both dark colors and contrasting colors.
2. Light: Very fair skin. Light eyes and hair. Natural blondes are in this group.
Contrast: The contrast between your skin tone, hair and eye color should be low.
Eyes: It can be light or dark blue or green, hazel. If your eyes are brown, you cannot be described as 'light'. Even though you dyed your hair blonde…
Hair: It can be very light, from light to dark tones of ashen or golden blond, light auburn.
In order for your dominant feature to be clearly defined; your eyes, hair, and skin colors should all be light.
3. Warm: Remember that you are looking for your dominant feature.
Contrast: Looking at your overall appearance, your contrast level should be moderate. None of your features should be too dark or light compared to the other.
Eyes: It can be light or dark brown, olive green, dark hazel, warm blue (usually with a yellow halo around the pupil).
Hair: Neither light nor dark, medium tones. We can add a scale from light or medium golden yellow to brown, from onion skin color to light and dark red, dark auburn to this group.
In order for your dominant feature to be defined as hot; the warmth has to come from your general appearance. The fact that one of your skin, eye or hair colors is warm does not make your dominant feature hot.
4. Cool: Your general appearance should be cool. Your skin should not contain any yellow or golden tones. Your skin, hair, and eyes should all fit the definition of cool.
Contrast: The contrast level of all your features can be medium or high. You may have very dark hair color against a light skin color.
Hair: Chestnut, ashy gray, silvery tones with no red accents, ranging from ashy blonde to brown. For darker-skinned people, dark brown, near-black brown and black.
In order for your dominant feature to be defined as cool, both your general appearance should be cool and your hair and skin color should contain medium or high contrast.
5. Clear: Bright, clean colors. Non of the facial features are natural, not cool. It means your overall color look is high contrast and saturated. (No gray or matte colors) A bright, shimmery eye color that highlights your hair even more.
Contrast: Your overall contrast should be medium or high.
Eyes: Eye color that comes before skin and hair color can be azure, turquoise blue or green, light green, emerald green, sparkling amber, brown or black.
Hair: Black, blackish brown, medium or light brown, light golden or reddish, light, whitish golden blond.
In order for your dominant feature to be defined as clear; there should be high contrast between features and color saturations. If you're also hot, your contrast may be slightly lower. If you're also cool, your contrast will often be higher.
6. Soft (Matte, Muted) : When your dominant character is soft, you are a mixture of hot and cool characters. This means a grayer image due to the high levels of gray your overall view contains. Since your skin, hair, and eye color are similar, they can be blended together. Your colors can also be described as ashy.
Contrast: You should have either medium or low contrast. All of your hair, eye, and skin color should be of similarly low intensity. They should fit the definition of blending more than contrast.
Eyes: Hazel, brown, gray green, gray blue.
Hair: It should be neither dark nor light. golden or ashy yellow to dark brown, onion skin to light auburn, medium to dark tones ashy brown, light gray.
In order for your dominant feature to be defined as soft: there should be no contrast in your general appearance and none of your features should be defined as bright.
A. Identify Your Secondary Features
1. At this stage, first determine whether warmer colors or cooler colors look better on you. Write this down next to your dominant features you identified earlier as a secondary features.
2. If your dominant feature is warm or cool, decide whether vivid colors or natural colors look good on you, so as not to define warm or cool a second time. Write this as a secondary feature.
After these two steps, you can find out which of the 12 seasons is suitable for you from the table below.
Let's start...
We will use the table of 12 seasons while matching which stone is suitable for which type of Season. This is a long topic. I plan to write about it in the future. Stay tuned.
History
How the 12 Season Color System was Developed
In this section, I will explain a little bit about the historical development of color analysis.
The first of the studies that allowed us to understand which colors would suit whom took place towards the end of the 1700s.
We know that the foundations of color analysis were laid by the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). He realized the connection and interaction between colors and introduced color psychology.
Albert Henry Munsell (1858 - 1918) developed a 3D model of colors.
Hue: There are 3 primary colors from which each color is derived. We can divide all colors into 2 groups as warm and cool colors.
Color value tint or shade: High value or low value/ light or dark color . We darken the color by adding black, or lighten it by adding white.
Saturation-chroma-intensity: Glossy - matte / vivid: We get by adding gray to the color.
Swiss painter Johannes Itten, a professor at Bauhaus University in Germany, realized that better results were obtained when some colors were used with some hair and skin tones in his 1888 -1967 studies and developed 4-season palettes. In this way, students were able to create easier and more interesting works by using these color palettes. However, he divided the colors into 2 categories. Hot cool and light dark. The saturation step was missing. This made the system inefficient.
American theorist Suzanne Caygill (1911-1994) combined seasonal theory with Goethe's psychology of color. Her theory was that people convey information about their personality and style through their natural skin, hair, and eye color. According to her, we can associate natural personal color characteristics with other color compositions found in nature. In Caygill's system, the colors of the four seasons were described separately for 16 different personality types.
In the 1980s, psychologist Carol Jackson published a book called Color Me Beautiful. This book also presented an important system for making the right choices in the selection of daily clothes. Jackson made the 4 Seasons System more useful. She obtained a 12-season color analysis table with the 4-season system that Munsell adapted to color modeling.
