CHOOSING THE BEST COLORS FOR MEN TO WEAR

Guys will often get hung up on choosing the right colors for themselves and it becomes a point of frustration during shopping (aside from finding stuff that fits, that's made from good material, that's at a fair price, etc.).

Along the way, maybe someone has said they look good in a certain color, so they wear a ton of that color. Or they wear their wife's favorite color or the color of their favorite football team.

The problem with all of this is that it's based on something external. Your favorite team's color has nothing to do with your coloring. The colors of the clothes you wear should be based on one thing - What makes YOU look good. What makes your eyes stand out, what brings out your hair color, etc.

There's a process called Color Analysis that I walk my clients through during a style consultation with me that explains this and actually finds you your best colors, which a lot of guys have told me is worth the consultation alone.

In the meantime, I'm going to give you an easy tip on how to start finding the right colors that will make you look good.

We're going to cover the topic of Value.

Value describes how Light or Dark a color is.

Let's use the example of Green below. You'll see there is a light version, a medium version, and a dark version.

I'll get a lot of guys who say "I can't wear Green", or "I know I look good in Green"...

What type of Green, buddy?

There's a spectrum here. What you are trying to figure out is what version or Value you look best in.

We can do this with any color. We're using the example of Green above, but that could easily be Blue, Red, etc.

In order to determine which Value of ANY color you look best in, you need to head to a mirror and take a look at your face.

What we're looking to do is use the Value of color to pull out your facial characteristics.

These are things like eye color, hair color, eyebrow color, etc. Anything that is NOT your skin. We are looking to draw those characteristics out away from the skin, as to not have your face blend together or wash out.

Below you'll find an example of women with Lighter Characteristics...

And here you'll find examples of women with Darker Characteristics....

Notice that the skin color really doesn't change much. What changes is everything on top of the skin - the characteristics of the face we discussed.

What you're trying to do is see where YOUR characteristics fall on a scale from light to dark. So have a look in the mirror and determine where you fall - are your eyes, hair, eyebrows, and facial hair somewhere closer to the lighter side, medium side, or darker side?

You can chart yourself out below....

Wherever you fall on that spectrum, right around there will be the perfect Value of colors for you to wear.

If you have darker characteristics, you'll generally look best in darker colors. Lighter characteristics? Lighter colors. It's as simple as that.

You just correspond your natural value (lightness or darkness of your characteristics) with your clothing.

Below you'll see a scale of Blue now. Can you determine what your best blue is now that you've determined your Value? Hopefully, it's pretty easy.

So whenever you want to wear a great color for yourself, aim to get it close to your natural Value. It' doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be close.

Now you're one step closer to looking awesome.

x Patrick