'Colours' Workshop

Have any of you ever had your ‘colours’ done? Are you wondering what on earth I’m talking about?

Recently my friend and I attended a 'Colours' Workshop, recommended to me by my Aunt who had done it and raved about it. The idea of this workshop is to determine, based on your main three colouring attributes (hair/eyes/skin), what colours suit and flatter you the most.

The process involves sitting in front of the group of people attending the workshop while variations of the same colour (i.e. red: warm and cool toned), for every colour under the rainbow, are placed over your clothes just under your neck. Everyone in the group votes on what they think suits you best, and it is usually a unanimous decision meaning you can have confidence in the results.

People tend to suit overall either warmer or cooler colours as a rule, and then there are a variety of more specific categories within each side of the warm/cool spectrum that you fit into. We also discussed makeup and jewellery (i.e. I suit silver jewellery best). In addition, you get a takeaway booklet of additional personalised information and a colour wheel palette to refer to.

This is my palette colour wheel (colours that are most complementary to me):

I really recommend getting your colours done because it’s great fun, especially if you go with girlfriends! It also makes you more aware of what suits you and what complements your skin tone/hair/eye colour. Then you can keep this in mind and refer to your palette when buying clothes, makeup and jewellery. 

When you wear your recommended colours, your eyes tend to pop, your complexion glows and your hair looks more vibrant and luscious. When you wear other colours, often you can look drained, aged, dull, or washed out. It’s just good to have a guide at the back of your mind as to what colours suit and flatter you best.

A 'Colours' Example (which you can try yourself at home):

My mum also got her colours done and she falls under the warmer, earthier colourings. She has lighter, chestnut brown hair with bronzey blonde highlights, blue eyes and is quite a bit more tanned than me.

The instructor told us to think of a paint palette of three colours - your hair colour, eye colour and skin colour. If you place them side by side or mix them slightly, is the resulting colour more of a cool, ashey colour, or a warm, earthy colour?

So for instance:

Me: Dark brown + Dark brown + Pale = Cool/Ashey

Mum: Bronzey chestnut light brown hair + Blue eyes + More tanned skin = Warm/Earthy

So you can see the former is more of a cool palette, whereas the latter is more of a warm palette (try squinting your eyes to get a gist of what the three colours are predominantly throwing - warm or cool).

My sister also got the same colour palette as me and she has similar dark brown hair, blue/grey eyes, and slightly more olive skin than me. I guess my hair and eye colour is a cooler brown, as is my sister’s hair and grey eye colour. So slight colour variations in attributes can still equate to the same end of the warm/cool spectrum.

So you can work out what you are if you can determine whether you’re throwing more cool or warm colours from your three colouring determinants (eye/hair/skin). A good way of testing if you are cooler toned is by seeing whether your skin has reddish undertones, whereas warmer tones tend to have golden undertones.

The cost of this workshop was around $132 inclusive (or you can do it for $55 without the take home palette). It went for approximately 3 hours. There are a lot of these type of workshops around so have a look in your area to see what is available. For the one I did see www.yourimage.com.au (look under Community Workshop tab).

What colour range do you think you fall under? Do you ignore what suits you best and just wear whatever colour you want, or is there some carefully considered formula behind your colour choices? Let me know if you’ve had your colours done and what you thought of it!