Inside Look at a Color Consultation

Geri emailed recently with this message: “You did my colors about 7 years ago and it was really life-changing.  I get compliments all the time.  Now my wonderful administrative assistant Brenda is retiring and I’d love to give her a consultation as a parting gift.”

What a terrific boss, no?

When the two of them arrived at my studio, the similarities in their coloring were obvious, but there were subtle differences too.   Here’s what we found:

1. Although highlights add interest to Brenda’s hair color, when we brushed it back from her her face to expose more of her natural color in the re-grown area, her eyes were suddenly spot-lighted in a very flattering way.  She opted to stay with highlights, but more sparse, so her over-all hair color will be a bit stronger.
2. That choice means that although both women’s coloring is muted and just slightly warm, Brenda’s best color values are somewhat deeper.
3. Both her facial features and the shapes in her hair style are a bit more angular than Geri’s,  so her best print motifs and style details repeat that slightly angular characteristic.

We played with some print scarves that illustrated those concepts – you can see the results below.  In the top pair, both prints are perfectly acceptable for Brenda, but the choice on the left draws more attention to the print while the slightly deeper colors in the right-hand  option let your attention go to her face. Notice how the variegated color effect and spikey shapes in the motifs echo the highlights and the shapes in her hair.

In the bottom pair, again both are good on Geri, but the left-hand choice doesn’t give her quite the lift and brightness of the right-hand one.  And the softly curved shapes of the foliage repeats the curved shapes in her hair.  Of course we couldn’t help noticing that the soft tropical print scarf was the perfect finishing touch to the pant/shell/jacket that Geri wore to the appointment.  Serendipity indeed!

Here’s the whole color range we selected for Brenda’s Color Fan –

From left to right, you’ll see

• her navy/cadet blues,
• her skin tones and hair highlights,
• her gray-blue eye colors (they look more gray than blue on my monitor – sorry)
• her hair low-light browns in the foreground,
• her signature “reds”
• her dark neutral chocolate browns and blue-y grays (related to her eye color).
• her ideal metallics (bottom corner) are a gold/silver mix and rose gold.
• then along the right edge, her additional reds, blues, greens and purples – the mid-range values from each strip.

To help clarify how to use her color strips in shopping, we matched them to some accessory selections:

From left to right: the original print from above contains her hair highlight colors and several of her coral-reds and seafoam greens.

The middle option mixes her slightly less warm, muted red  with the  colors from her hair.  You see it paired with a necklace in her most-flattering gold/silver mix.

The third print plays many of her accent colors – butter yellow, coral, seafoam and aqua – against her gentle navy blue.

Can’t wait to see how she implements her information in a new wardrobe for her “life of leisure”.