How To Do A Color Analysis On Yourself (2025)

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at U Conn chapter.

We may have briefly heard about or seen color analysis on our For You Pages or on TikTok at one point or another. However, what is color analysis exactly?

Color analysis helps you identify the colors that enhance your natural features, based on your hair, eye, and skin color. The process can be done professionally or on your own. By the end, you’ll be categorized into one of twelve color seasons, each with a personalized palette to complement your unique tones. Each color season includes a color palette to harmonize with your natural coloring.

The 12 color palettes are based on different essential variables: whether someone is more of a cool or warm undertone temperature-wise or more on a value scale, and whether they are light or dark. From there, we can pick where along the scale of the color you would fit in best in your unique undertone between the seasons, picking either Winter, Autumn, Spring, or Summer.

A color analysis helps you discover the colors and undertones that naturally enhance your features. It allows you to build a wardrobe that is tailored for you. Knowing your colors is the key to highlighting your unique features, whether for clothing or makeup. That said, you can get this service done professionally, determined by a professional color stylist. However, learning how to do it at home is an excellent tool if you want to do it yourself or help a friend out.

Main color categories

Before getting into the analysis, it might be helpful to know the main color categories you will encounter. There are many different variations from a four to a 28 color palette. However, it commonly expands into the typical four, eight, or 12. Trying a 12-step approach might be a good way to learn more about your color scheme and eventually dive further into the different color palettes.

So we have the 12 different color palettes:

Light Spring: This palette is warm and light, with soft and sunny tones. Think of peach, coral, and warm yellow.

True/Warm Spring: This is a classic palette with warm colors. Think of gold, coral, and warm turquoise.

Bright Spring: Its palette is vibrant, with golden-based colors. Think of warm reds, bright aqua, and orange.

Light Summer: It’s a soft and cool pastel palette. Think of lavender, soft pinks, and light blues.

True/Cool Summer: This is a classic and cool color palette. Think periwinkle, dusty blue, and soft navy.

Soft Summer: This is a cool, muted palette with dusty shades. Think of mauve, faded blue, and rose.

Soft Autumn: This is a warm palette with soft and dusty shades. Think sage, terracotta, camel, and olive.

True/Warm Autumn: This is a classic warm palette with earthy tones. Think burnt orange, mustard, deep olive.

Deep Autumn: It’s a warm and deep palette with rich, earthy tones. Think rust, mustard, deep greens.

Deep Winter: This palette is cool and deep with bold, icy colors. Think deep blues, emerald green, and cranberry.

True/Cool Winter: This is a classy, cool-toned palette. Think royal blue, icy pink, and white.

Bright Winter: This is a cool, bright palette with high-contrast shades. Think jewel tones, icy silver, and fuchsia.

There are so many different palettes of color that you can see enhancing your closet and style. Now, it’s time to find out how to figure out which color your features work best with.

Prepping for a color analysis

Starting is super simple. Your face is almost a canvas for figuring out what color might be best for you. The first step is to take a face-only selfie in daylight to help you better see the colors and undertones most prominent on your face. You’ll be looking at your skin, hair, and eyes.

Try wearing a white or lighter shade so all the focus can be on your face colors. Avoid jewelry, as it can distract from your focal colors. Keep your face as bare as possible and have a simple background with nothing too distracting happening in the background.

How to start your color analysis

Sitting in front of a mirror, you will try to determine your skin color first. And essentially, you’re first going to find out if you have a cool or a warm undertone. There are many ways of determining if you’re a warm or cool undertone. Think about how your skin reacts to the sun. Do you tan easily or burn quickly? Or, depending on how your veins appear on your skin, with a more hands-on approach. Look at your veins. Do they appear greener or blue/purple?

If your veins look a bit more greenish, you have a warm undertone. If you have bluish/purplish veins, you might have cool undertones; if you have a mix of both, you might have neutral undertones that are both cool and warm, you might notice more you lean towards one or the other based off the tanning question or the color testing method of what looks better on you.

However, you can also try pulling a color up for reference. If you have any colors of a piece of clothing, color swatches, or even colored paper that are two different shades of the same color, try flipping back and forth between how the color looks on you and what you see when those colors are on you.

After some back-and-forth testing of the colors and what might look better, you might have a gut answer as to what looks best. For a second opinion, ask a friend to see what they think might also work for determining your skin undertone.

Remember, for this initial part, the colors should be relatively similar. Whether red or blue, they need to be the same color but different shades to determine whether you have cool or warm undertones.

Suppose you observed that cool undertones look better on you, congratulations! That would mean you might be more of a summer or a winter. Often, silver, cool reds, cool blues, and generally cooler colors might complement your undertones more.

Suppose you observed that warm undertones look better on you, congratulations! That would mean you might be more of an autumn or a spring. Often, gold, warm red, warm blue, or any warmer colors might complement your undertones more.

Next step: light vs. dark

After determining whether you are cool or warm, you can start with the following process: deciding whether your features are light or dark. This one is relatively simpler and straightforward. This part of the process can change if, for example, you were to change your hair color. The intensity and depth of the light/darkness would change with it.

Light features indicate that your hair, eyes, and skin are fairer. Therefore, lighter colors would suit you better.

Dark features would indicate that your features have a strong, rich contrast and deeper colors flatter you.

For example, a cool and light person would look best in soft pastels and icy colors, and a cool and deep person would look best in bold and high-contrast colors.

A tip to keep in mind: When you test a color, if your eye is more drawn to the color than your face and your facial features, that color might be too much for your palette. The same can be said if the color is too pale; your primary focus should be your face, however, still highlighting the color. The color should highlight your face, creating harmony between the two.

However, with the light vs. dark variable, whatever colors you try out again, find that color, then find its lighter and darker shades. Whatever that specific color you look best in, whether a deep navy blue or a light blue, those can determine what would look best.

Soft vs Bright?

I mentioned previously, color palettes that indicate a soft vs. bright characteristic. If you are more suited for “soft colors,” these colors lean more towards grey and dusty. The clear and well-lit version of that color would be the bright version, and the more muted/grayish it gets, the more it mixes with it. A bright color will be a clear color that shows and demonstrates that exact color.

So this is more of a general test for what works for you. This may often coincide with the colors of your eyes. Are they a clear blue or clear green, or do they lean more toward a darker greyish version of said color?

Ordering your color preferences

Now, from all those tests you did with different colors, you will rank these variables to determine your best-suited color palette.

• Warm vs. Cool Colors

• Light vs. Dark Colors

• Soft vs. Bright Colors

If one of these variables is neutral and has no positive or negative impact, you feel okay in both versions. This variable would be ranked low on the list. The ones you think have the most impact are ranked first, often the warm vs. cool variable, then your second variable.

Once you determine this ranking, you can finally categorize your features into a color palette! Generally, if you can start categorizing yourself by the first variable, the warm vs. cool, seeing as those don’t often change from Season to Season. Narrow your palette to two seasons from below, and you’ll be on the right track.

Summers are: Cool, Light, and Soft.

Autumns are: Warm, Bright, and Dark.

Winters are: Cool, Dark, and Bright.

Springs are: Warm, Light, and Bright.

Once you can narrow down your variables to the following three, refer to the earlier 12-color palette, and pick which of your variables go hand in hand the most. Sometimes, it might be interchangeable. Sometimes, you might look better in bright colors, but your other features might be more like winter or spring. That’s where ordering the variables is important to determine which one is more important to categorize than others.

However, there are many ways of determining a color palette. It is essential to take the time to choose the right one for yourself. This is just one method you can find online, but it is efficient and rather fun. You can make a night of it with your friends.

Your Color Journey

Now that you’ve explored your color season, what’s next? Try doing a wardrobe refresh, go shopping, keep your color palette in mind, and work from there. Or experiment with different makeup or accessories and see what suits you best.

The color palettes are meant to be a guideline for styling yourself, but in the end, a color theory doesn’t dictate your entire closet and fashion style. It’s a guideline to help your natural colors and features shine. You can go as in-depth with the seasonal color palette as you like or do them just for fun. Wear what makes you feel your best!

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