When it comes to dressing with confidence, having a personal color palette is a huge factor as it gives you your most flattering colors; however, how you wear your colors is also important. One of the most important elements for how you wear your clothes is your personal contrast level. Once you understand it, it will make a huge difference in how comfortable you feel in your outfits and whether people first notice your face or your clothes. So, let’s talk about personal contrast – what it is, how to find it for yourself, and how to use that to level up your style.

Value Contrast

Your personal contrast level is about value. The value of a color is basically how light or dark it is. On the grayscale below, you can see that 0 is the darkest (black) and 10 is the lightest (white). While on the color wheel, the lighter colors are on the inside and the darker colors are on the outside. When two colors are close to each other on the scale or wheel, they are low contrast and when they are far apart from each other they are high contrast. 

Your Personal Contrast Level

Your personal contrast comes down to the difference in the value of your hair and skin, and to some extent your eyes and other factors. Using myself as an example, the first picture demonstrates the fact that it can be harder to assess the value of your skin and hair using a gray scale. Changing my picture to black and white, now it’s much easier to see that my hair is very light (maybe a 9) while my skin isn’t much different (maybe an 8). This means that my personal contrast level is quite low.  

Someone who has dark hair and light skin (think Courtney Cox) would be an example of a highly contrasted person. There are highly contrasted people who have all dark coloring (versus light mixed with dark) – they often have very dark skin and hair yet very bright whites of their eyes and/or teeth – think Naomi Campbell. 

Personal Contrast & Style

Once you know your personal contrast level, you can apply it to your outfits to create a more harmonious look. The first outfit below is a high contrast outfit in that it is white and black. None of these pieces are terrible for me, but rather when put together, they draw eyes away from my face because the outfit is more contrasted than I am. Making a few tweaks to the outfit, lowers the contrast and increases my confidence. 

Here are some examples of both high and low contrast outfits. In the high contrast group, you can see that it’s not just black and white pairings. It might be a light shirt and dark denim or a striped or bold patterned top. High contrast people can also wear all dark or all light as it will contrast with at least one element of their personal coloring. With the low contrast, it doesn’t mean only dark or light colors – it’s all medium, light with light, and dark with dark while the prints are less bold in their coloring or pattern.

As a medium contrast level isn’t too high or too low, everyone can wear this level, so if you’re in doubt try a combination like those below – all medium, medium with light or medium with dark. For prints, they are just a happy medium between high and low contrast.

A Note About Seasons

Now that we’ve got the basics down, there are some nuances to discuss. The pictures below are of two people (my mom and I) who would show a low contrast level on the grayscale at the top of this post; however, my mom is wearing a navy and white striped shirt and is glowing, so what gives?

Well, contrast is about your natural contrast level and she is a naturally contrasted person as she had quite dark hair in her youth. So, although she is no longer contrasted, she still wears contrast well. That is partly due to her dark eyebrows, but also because she is a Cool Winter. The Winter color season is all about contrast – it’s the essence of their season.

To make matters more complicated, this isn’t true for everyone. Her sister, whose coloring is very similar, is the opposite. Her sister is a Cool Summer and Summers need softness. High contrast is almost the opposite of “softness;” however, she could handle it in her youth due to having dark hair and light skin. Once she went gray, she lost her contrast level and was missing the softness needed to feel her best in her outfits as a Summer.

Graying didn’t have an effect on my personal contrast level or season, because my gray hair is a similar value to the blonde hair of my youth.

I know that understanding contrast can be a bit overwhelming when you are getting dressed, but instead of thinking of it like a checklist or a must-do, just keep the principles in mind if you are feeling like your outfit just isn’t working. Sometimes, just switching out one piece can change the contrast level and make the outfit work well for you.