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How to Use Personal Colour Palettes to Shop Sustainably

The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UCT chapter.

You might be asking what even are personal colours? Autumn, Winter, Summer, those are seasons?

Personal colour analysis is essentially a technique which uses the undertones in your skin to find the colour palette that brightens and suits your specific undertones the best. It’s a pretty common technique which many celebrities and their stylists use to pick colours that will suit their particular features the best.

Now this isn’t to say that personal colours mean you shouldn’t ever wear any colours besides the ones in your personal colour palette, it’s just a gentle suggestion meant to guide you, but it might be able to help you shop a little more sustainably as you can curate your closest in the colours that you know will bring out the best in your undertones. Knowing your personal colour can help you to make less impulsive shopping decisions which you might end up regretting and then tossing!

Simply put, personal colour palettes are split into warm, cool and neutral tones and then further into seasonal types so Summer, Winter, Autumn, and Spring.

You actually get trained professionals that use a series of colour palettes to analyse your undertones and find your personal colour palette. Of course, not everyone is willing to spend actual factual money on personal colour analysis but there’s a number of ways to figure out your personal colour all on your own!

Firstly, a simple way is to check whether your veins specifically those on the inner side of your wrist appear more blue or more green if they appear more green, you’re usually warm toned and if they appear more blue, you’re usually cool toned. If they appear blue-green that usually means you’re neutral-toned!

Another way to feel out whether you’re warm or cool toned is to note whether you tan easily or sunburn easily, generally people who tan easily tend to be warm-toned and people who tend to sunburn easily are cool-toned.

Knowing whether you’re warm or cool toned can inform you on whether gold or silver jewellery enhances your skin tone more. Generally, silver enhances cool tones and gold enhances warm tones. This little detail can be super helpful if you’re always stuck in the silver or gold jewellery debate.

Once you know whether you’re warm or cool-toned you can also pick out foundations and concealer shades that match up with your undertones and this can be super helpful for a more seamless blend of your skin and the foundation or concealer. Similarly it is also a super helpful when it comes to dying your hair as you’ll be provided with colours that will enhance your natural skin-tone and facial features.

If you can’t be bothered to do all that thinking or go through all that effort there’s many apps like Color Lover Lab or Show My Colors available which can help you find your personal colour through a series of questions and colour palette tests, similarly you can also check out the many TikTok filters which provide you with different colour palettes and see which ones look the best to you.

By figuring out your personal colour you can shop just a little bit more sustainably and curb those impulsive shopping decisions by sticking to the colours you now know will look amazing on you!

Nuhaa Isaacs is a Cape Town born and raised student at the University of Cape Town. She is currently studying toward a BA triple majoring in English Literary Studies, Media and Writing as well as Gender Studies. She has been a staff writer for Her Campus UCT since 2021, and a current member of the Social Media Sub-committee at Her Campus UCT. Sappy romantic fantasy novels and incredibly specific Spotify playlists are everything to her (as well as her three cats: Zuri, Shelley and Peanut). You can find her on Instagram (@nuhaa_i) or Tiktok (@nuhaaorwhatever) probably posting silly little outfit videos. Get in touch via email for any formal inquiries: nuhaa.isaacs@gmail.com.