Clothing, clothing everywhere – but not a thing to wear. We’ve all been there: staring down the contents of our wardrobes, but not able to make the outfit fit. Despite what the TV says, orange is still not the new black, but there is, in fact, a few effortless tricks to bring a whole lot of colour into your daywear without making people think the circus is in town. Get ready to paint with all the colours of your wardrobe with these five, simple colour-matching tricks.

Fishing For Complementary Colours

When you ask about colour-matching, you will likely be pointed to a colour wheel before anything else. The wheel looks lovely, but what’s a person to do with it? It quickly becomes clear that colour is almost its own language. Like grammar, some colours look so right together, and yet, like a misplaced comma, you can immediately spot when colours are mismatched.

The first thing you need to understand is the concept of colour schemes, specifically “warm” and “cool” colours. Warm colours communicate passion and happiness, while cool colours give an impression of calm and professionalism (so have these colours handy in your work wardrobe). These are easy enough to locate on a colour wheel: warm colours range from red to the light green, while the cool colours are on the other side of the wheel, made up of the deeper green to purple hues.

Now, on to how to combine these colours. A more commonly known combination is that of complementary colours, which are any two colours on opposite ends of the wheel, e.g. red and green, or blue and orange. This contrast can appear rather garish at times, but it can be negated by making one colour a darker shade – a background colour – than the other more accented colour.

Split complementary colours use three colours, two of those being two colours adjacent to the one’s complementary colour. This scheme is near-impossible to mess up, since the colours aren’t diametrically opposite to each other.

Analogous colours are any three colours located next to each other on the colour wheel. You’ve most likely seen this colour combination everywhere from gradient rainbow cakes to ombre hair styles. Ideally use colours from only the warm or only the cool half of the wheel to avoid a jarring contrast.

Setting the Skin Tone

As important as it is that the colours of your clothes match other items of clothing, it’s just as important to find the right colour combination to suit your birthday suit. Should you have a pale or yellow skin tone, focus on colours on the cooler side of the spectrum, namely grey, navy blue, varying shades of green, aqua, burgundy, and the like. If you have a deeper skin tone, you can zero in on the brighter, warmer colours like lighter shade of brown, coral, honey, gold, amber, taupe, etc. as these really pop when set against darker skin tones.

Keep Things Simple With Neutral Colour Matches

Neutral colours are an easy way to dress to impress for any business or high-class social engagement. This subtle sign of class includes colours like black, white gray, blue, brown, and olive. Ladies can also get away with adding a few other colours to this list, specifically burgundy, baby blue, and pale pink. You can build quite a wardrobe out of these colours alone. That said, if nude and neutral shades don’t sound too appealing to you, you can always add a touch of colour to make any neutral outfit stand out in a crowd.

Make It Pop

It is time to throw a little colour in the mix. Starting with a base of neutral colours, you can make a centrepiece out of a more vibrant colour in a coat or an accessory like a scarf or ornate piece of jewellery. If one of your clothing items has a multicoloured pattern over a neutral background, make that pattern the crowning glory of your outfit. Just make sure that, when you let the pattern take over an outfit, you tone down your accessories.

Matchmaking Musts

There are two elements in your outfit that absolutely must match and those are your leathers and your metals. If you’re wearing leather shoes, make sure your belt is the same (or at the very least similar) shade. And if you’re throwing a leather jacket into the mix, that had better match the shoes/belt too. This rule also applies to jewellery and watches. Make sure you’re not pairing a gold watch with silver cufflinks or a rose-gold necklace with a platinum ring.

And there you have it: five rules to dress by to ensure a stylish colour match-up every time. Share your fashion hits and misses with us on Facebook and Instagram.