Color Psychology: How to Use Color to Get a Needed Impression

Today I'd like to speak about how color can influence impression on others. Every time you pick an item you should think not only about its shape or quality but also what color it has. Because usually, we see color first!

Let's imagine a slim girl that has a light, warm, and low contrast color type. She is not ready to radically change her style and she is not into trends. She can be a student or a young mother. She has no time to put on makeup and likes to dress up quickly. 

Let's create a simple and basic wardrobe for her. The only difference in items is going to be color and texture. As a base, we are going to take a creamy sweater and colorful jeans. Now we can analyze how color is going to change the impression in each outfit.

When we think about pink color we imagine something tender, soft and cute. When we combine a soft, white sweater with pink jeans we maintain these feelings. This combination created soft and comfortable look. With this outfit, you can express a romantic attitude to life, gentle character, softness and love for comfort. This color makes you look kind, open and lovely.

Keep in mind that depending on the temperature of color it can change the impression. Cold temperature creates a distance while warmer shades show openness and friendliness. 

Taupe is considered to be an intermediate shade between dark brown and gray. This is why it perfectly replaces the gray color for soft, light color types. It creates a neutral impression; however, it's not cold and detached as a gray color. This outfit expresses neutrality, introversion, and clear boundaries. It also reminds earthy tones which can make you look grounded and stable.

If you're planning to have a business conversation, communicate with strange and you don't want to demonstrate your rich inner world or emotions then pick a taupe color.

Since taupe color is neutral it can create a base for other colors (including aggressive and bold ones). But in this set, it has its purest form, it's soft and neutral.

If you want to energize the room and bring attention to yourself then definitely pick a yellow color. Because we are using a light sweater our girl can experiment with a brighter color in her lower body part. The yellow color symbolizes energy, happiness and optimism. It can be a bit irritating but with white color, it creates a light, happy mood with a fresh note. This outfit is best for large gatherings, parties, meetings with friends. Don't use bright yellow color in tops if you have a light appearance or cool skin temperature.

Blue jeans are everywhere. Which make them super neutral item. Such denim color doesn't have individuality or emotions, because it is the same color as most jeans on the planet. We can consider such denim as a basic and neutral one. If khaki color is used to get lost in the woods, then in such jeans you can get lost in the city among the crowd. This color blends you with everyone else and doesn't leave you room to stand out. 

It's a perfect combination if you want to protect yourself from much attention and hide information about yourself. You such outfit to look like "an average modern city girl". Moderately smart, moderately active, moderately ready to defend her borders.

Khaki comes in many different shades, in my example, it is dusty, light and even slightly cool khaki green. Khaki reminds military uniforms, but it also has similar ties to nature (because the whole point of khaki military uniforms is to blend in with the bushes).

Usually, clothes that use khaki color support military style. this is why khaki-colored clothes give an impression of rigidity and sharpness. Such an outfit has an interesting contrast between a soft sweater and structured, military pants. If you have similar contrast in your personality and like to make barely readable hints that you're always ready to defend your boundaries then this option is going to work great on you.

This is a good outfit for meeting with friends or also in business situations where you want to express yourself in a harsher tone. Personally, I don't find this color attractive to a majority of women because it doesn't compliment skin tone.

So, just by changing the main color in the set, we get different looks, suitable for different situations and different characters. You can always experiment and wear what feels right at the moment OR strategically use certain colors to achieve your goals! It's really up to you.

If you want to learn more about color combinations you can download my FREE guide here.

But if you want to know exactly what colors work best for you, get your color palette then I suggest a personal color analysis! You can read about this service here.

With love,

Sofiya