FAQ's

Wearing colours that flatter you is one of the most important elements of styling yourself effectively and is the difference between looking great and looking very average. A great outfit that is not in a colour that suits you, will no longer look like a great outfit. Colours that work with your skin undertone, eyes and hair colour bring a healthy glow and a noticeably striking change to your face and eyes. Colour is also energy and if that energy harmonises with your energy, then you will find new elements of health and vibrancy are brought into the mix. I promise you, you will receive more flattering comments on your appearance than you ever have had, when you wear colours that suit you. In addition, clothes and accessory shopping time is cut in half. You will home in on the colours that suit you, and happily disregard items of clothing and accessories that don’t. Learn what colours suit you and what colours don’t. Colour analysis is a one-off experience, meaning it’s not something you ever need to re-do. Your colours don’t change throughout your life. You may need ‘tweaking’ when you’re older and greyed, but generally you remain in your colour palette and not much changes.

A person’s undertone, value and intensity (what shines through and what colour analysts are examining), is determined by an individual’s unique biological variation of pigments and skin structure, in particular; their dominant Melanin type (Eumelanin - there are two types, or Pheomelanin), the amount of Melanin they produce, the location where an individual’s Melanin sits in their skin (surface level or deeper), its distribution pattern (even or uneven), as well as its interactions with other pigments: Haemoglobin and Carotenoids. Skin structure including Collagen and skin thickness, also contribute to the appearance of a person’s undertone, value and intensity. It’s how all these factors mentioned above, interact with light, that gives an individual’s overall appearance of not only undertone, but a person’s value (how light or dark they are) and intensity (how muted or bright they are). This undertone, value and intensity is seen through the skin surface which acts merely as a filter. I liken these biological variations to layers of tinted glass, which react with light and ultimately generate not only your undertone, but also your skin value (lightness or darkness) and intensity (‘mutedness’ or brightness). The result is, some people will appear with a blue/red undertone, while others will present with a yellow undertone. Some can even present as quite neutral. As well, we find people suit different values and levels of colour better than others. In addition to skin undertone, we can observe a person’s eye colour, eye patterns and hair colour, then determine from all these mentioned factors, the colour palette that best suits each individual.

In a word, no. Over time your hair greys, your face loses colour (your value and intensity can change), but your undertone stays relatively the same. You may find that you suit different colours in your specific seasonal home palette when these changes occur, but your home season, be it Summer, Winter, Autumn or Spring, will not change. It would be very rare for this to occur. A colour ‘tweakment’ service is available for past clients wanting to ‘tweak’ their palette during the aging process.

Yes. It is best practice not to assess persons under the age of 16. This is because undertone and hair colour have not settled until about this age.

That is very normal. The system that I use hasn’t really changed that much since the 1970s. Colour analysis has developed since the 80s when it was very popular. The 4 seasons are still used, however, colour analysis has actually reverted further back to original colour analysis from what you may remember in the 1980s (Carole Jackson’s ‘Colour Me Beautiful system). Colour analysis prior to Colour Me Beautiful, was much more technical than the basic 4 seasons that Carole Jackson offered (Jackson in her book, Colour Me Beautiful, simplified and watered down the original systems to just 4 palettes which originally, depending on the analyst, consisted of many palettes - up to 64). I offer the 16-palette system, similar to what Bernice Kentner, one of the original colour analysts developed. If you can understand that in each of the 4 seasons, the colours can be broken down and grouped into 3 further categories, it’s not so overwhelming. For example, if you looked at a Summer palette, you could group the colours further. You would find that some of the colours in the Summer palette could be grouped as very muted colours compared to the others, some very pastel and light, and others very cool and deeper than the others in the Summer palette. They are all Summer colours, but what you find, is that some people suit the muted Summer colours the best (these people are called Soft Muted Summers), others suit the light pastel ones the best (called Light Summers), others suit the really cool Summer colours the best (known as Cool Summers), and some just look great in all of them (we regard these people as being in the 4th category, in this case, they a called a ‘True Summer’). As a Summer you can wear all categories, but you may find you suit one of the categories the best. So long as you are not a ‘True’ palette, as in a ‘True Summer’ for example, some of the colours that suit you will overlap slightly into one other season, and you find you can borrow a few colours from that other seasons. It’s really that simple and the same concept goes for all the 4 seasons.

Some of you may have had a colour analysis which has not sat comfortably with you. Misdiagnosis can occur, not only from an in-person colour analysis, but also online/virtual and certainly through Artificial Intelligence, leaving you feeling misplaced in your colour palette. If you do not feel comfortable in your colour palette, it is quite often likely you have been misdiagnosed. I welcome you to come and get your colours accurately done, to get you into the correct palette where you feel happily in harmony.

At this time, no. The simple reason being, I’m more interested at this time in a personal approach which I don’t believe is so achieved online. This may change in the future.

I offer pairs/couples. This is only available for the Colour Analysis Express service (a group is considered 2 persons only). Groups are not available for any other service offered. Length of appointment will alter. See pairs pricing on Colour Express.

Yes (1 additional person only).