So I Got My "Colors" Done...
"That's my season!" - me forever
“Colors” are not a new concept. My Nana and her sister got them done decades ago (they were a Spring and Summer, respectively). She kept her booklet of colors in her train case, which I now have. I didn’t know she had done this, but now looking back I remember her always wearing certain colors and almost never straying. People would always tell me that my Nana always looked “so put together.” Maybe it was the colors or maybe it was just her, probably both. Social media has brought a newfound popularity to this seasoned (pun intended) concept and it’s all I’ve seen or heard about on TikTok, IG, and from personal friends for months! At first, I hated the idea. I’m sure a small part of me was just trying to be a contrarian, but with time I softened to the idea. My sister so kindly gifted me a joint appointment for my 30th birthday and free has a way of changing my mind pretty quickly.
This topic was something so many of you were curious about or raved about. I was shocked at the amount of questions you had about the process. These eight were the most frequently asked.
Where did you have it done? My friends here in Denver used House of Colour, a London based company of color analysts. You can go to their website and find someone near you. My sister booked our session with Ashley Murphy in Greenwood Village. Here is her HoC page and IG. It looks like most House of Color analysts, like Ashley, operate out of their homes. We had a great experience at Ashley’s house and her home studio was beautifully decorated and felt very professional. No stranger danger here!
How much did it cost? It’s expensive, which is why I was so touched that my sister gifted it to me for my 30th! Ashley’s prices are a private 2 hour session for $360 or a private two-person session for 3 hours for $620 (this is what we did). There is certainly a large barrier to entry, but it makes for a great gift. My friends were all gifted it by their husbands for their birthdays, anniversaries, etc. While I’m not opposed to spending money on an experience, I too would have asked for this as a gift. I am not sure how prices vary depending on location, but all the House of Colour consultants show their prices on the booking platform.
So what do you actually do there? For those unfamiliar to “colors” or have not been inundated with videos on social media, the process consists of finding the season (Winter, Spring, Summer, or Autumn) you fall into and then pinpointing your “best colors” within that season. When you find your season and your best colors, you should see an evening of skin tone, clarity and brightness to the color of your eyes, overall glow, and definition of your facial features.
At your appointment you are instructed to come with no makeup, hair pulled back, and you are draped in a true white fabric smock while sitting in front of a window in natural light. House of Colour analysts use fabric drapes of various shades of colors to conduct their process. The first step is to find your undertone: blue or yellow. This will determine if you are a cool season (Winter or Summer) or warm season (Autumn or Spring). They find this by draping a cool white and a warm white over your chest and they flip back and forth between the two to see the changes in your skin, eyes, and more. Once they find your undertone they move to the seasons within that and conduct the same flipping back and forth method between different shades of the two seasons you might fall into. So for example someone who is a cool undertone will have a Winter pink drape and a Summer pink drape and the analyst will flip back and forth to see which is best. Once your season is found then they go through all 36 fabric drapes in that season and follow the same layering process to find the colors that look best on you. You can confidently wear any color in your season, but since we are all unique one Winter might look best in a blue than another Winter might look in that same exact blue. During this process the analyst will categorize all 36 colors as a 3, 2, and 1 star so you know which colors to prioritize in your outfits.
At the end of the appointment you will receive a fan booklet of all your season’s colors to take out while shopping online or in person. This is so handy and I’ve already used mine.
Does it include makeup? Yes! House of Colour includes a makeup consult. They apply mineral foundation, blush, mascara, and show you your 3 best “reds” as they call it, while being draped in coordinating colors. To be honest, this was my least favorite part. Not because it wasn’t fun, but because the shades that do look best on me are not the ones I generally gravitate toward and it was hard for me to get past my preference. Ashley was so nice about it and never made me feel like I needed to overall my entire makeup routine. Instead she turned it into a positive and told me that these are colors that I CAN wear well whenever I feel like branching out of my norm. On the flip side, my sister loved the makeup portion and has not stopped stop talking about it.
Tip: BRING AN EYELASH CURLER! I have very straight lashes so when I applied the provided mascara it barely looked like anything was on. Having a saturated lip color on with almost no eye makeup made it hard for me to visualize the makeup look as a whole.
What is your season? Was it what you expected? I suspected I was an Autumn. I already wear very Autumn leaning colors on a regular basis (olive greens, creams, mustards), so it was not a shock that I was very obviously an Autumn when we were draping me. My sister who looks very similar to me (we are asked if we are twins all the time) ended up being a Summer! We were both shocked, but after seeing her in the summer colors it was very clear those were perfect on her.
Is online just as good as in person? 10000000% no. This is a process that needs to be done in person! Before our session my sister used ChatGPT and other quizzes which base your season off hair, skin, and eye color and she always got Autumn because she has brown hair and green eyes, but the Autumn colors made her look very yellow and her eyes muddy. Online is not to the trusted! The biggest thing I learned is eye color is not a good indicator of what your undertone or season might be. My sister’s warm leaning eyes looked brighter in cool undertones than warm. Ashley, our stylist, has bright blue eyes, blonde hair and is a Winter! She has a great video on her IG showing her old clothes that fell into the Autumn season vs her new Winter wardrobe. Also, video does not do it justice. I have watched SOOOO many color appointments on social media and I could barely see a difference, but in person it was so obvious to me.
Was it worth it? Absolutely. My sister and I both loved every second of our appointment and literally have not stopped talking about it since Wednesday. For my sister this has been a truly life changing experience for her because she has been wearing warm shades her whole life even though she never felt really “good” in them. For me, my closet is pretty much Autumn already except for my many navy items (navy is a very hard color to find in an Autumn shade). I won’t stop wearing navy or black, but I’m so excited to START wearing and adding so many new colors. One of Autumn’s descriptors is “vibrant” and I tend to shy away from those shades, but now I feel so confident in adding them into my wardrobe.
What made the process even more worth it was going with my sister. I highly recommend bringing someone with you or doing a joint appointment. When draping so many colors your eyes can start to play tricks on you so it’s nice to have a third person there who can immediately see a difference when you maybe can’t. Also, it makes the experience as a whole really fun and creates a new memory.
What are you going to buy now? A misconception I had about this process is that I would immediately need to throw anything out of my season away, but Ashley said the opposite. She still owns so many “out of season” clothes and has instead found new ways to wear them that bring them into “harmony” with her season. Her tips were to keep what you love and add different layers or accessories that are in your season. As you naturally buy new clothes, use the color fan to guide you, but not limit you. There is no need to throw away perfectly good clothes, keep them and wear them until they come to their inevitable end of life and that’s when you replace it with something in your season. I loved this mindset, because I am a big believer in using something up before buying something new.
But because you asked….I have already bought a few things. First, brown mascara! We tried brown mascara during our appointment and we both saw a difference in our eye color compared to black. My go-to Lancome mascara doesn’t come in brown, so I bought this highly rated YSL one to try. Browns are in my “best colors” category and I surprisingly don’t have many brown items so I bought this dress and this dress from Hill House’s summer collection. I really want the Cosima in brown, but it’s currently sold out. Two items I haven’t bought yet, but are on my list is this brown Clare V trucker hat and this red linen dress from Reformation.
It was a 10/10 experience. If you’ve been wanting to try it out or you’ve been in a fashion slump for a while (ME!!!!), I highly recommend this process. I have yet to meet someone who has regretted it! I’m so excited to bring my wardrobe back to life after so many years of having that “I have nothing to wear” feeling.
If you have anymore specific questions about the process or about Ashley, drop them below. If you have had your colors done I need to know what your season is and how it’s changed (or not changed) your life.
I’m apologizing now for referring to things as “my season” from here until eternity.
This may be a stupid question, but how involved are you in the process? I’m colorblind (yes women can be colorblind) and I see color, but some shades just blend into too much for me. Basically I can’t really trust myself when it comes to colors (I generally depend on reading labels to verify colors).
I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile but the price tag always deterred me. Definitely will be booking an appointment when my mom is out here next for us both.