Here's How You Can Do Your Own Colour Analysis and Discover Your Colour Season
- Daria
- May 11
- 5 min read
There are, of course, many ways to try to determine your colour season, but draping remains the best method. And you know what, we truly believe that green is one of the best colours to drape with, just because green can be incredibly varied: soft, bright, light, deep, cool, warm. All you need to know is which characteristic matters most in your natural colouring because that's when you can easily find your best colour palette.
But as I've mentioned draping isn’t the only method people use. Before we get into which shades of green are best to use for determining your undertone and colour season, let’s look through some of the more common colour analysis techniques, starting with the trickiest ones, of course.
Don't forget to try our free colour analysis quiz as well. It takes a few minutes!
Colour Analysis Methods That Won't Help You Find Your Best Colours
Is Vein Test Useful For Colour Analysis?
Vein test isn't that helpful when it comes to determing your colour season and your best colours to wear. And I still don’t really understand how this method became so popular.
When I first began trying to identify my own colouring, I read about the vein test and immediately tried it on myself. My veins looked teal, which, according to the guide, supposedly meant I had a neutral undertone.
And I was delighted.
I thought it meant I could wear warmer colours near my face, go golden with my hair, experiment more freely…
Now, looking back, I honestly feel sorry for myself during that period.
My undertone is actually extremely cool, and I spent years walking around with a constantly red-looking face because of all the warmth I introduced.
The problem with the vein test is that so many things affect how veins appear:
• olive skin (we have so many useful blog posts on this, for example:
• fair skin
• tanning
• lighting
• skin transparency
Your veins may look blue, green, teal, purple and none of it necessarily tells you your real undertone or colour season accurately. Personally, I think it’s a very outdated method that deserves retirement.
Does Jewellery Test Work To Find Your Colour Season?
Jewellery test for colour analysis is tricky. However, less so than the vein test. The jewellery test works much better if you understand what you’re actually observing.
Sometimes a piece of jewellery receives endless compliments on us not because it harmonises beautifully, but because it contrasts dramatically and steals all the attention for itself.
A few years ago I bought a very yellow gold leaf necklace from Zara. People constantly complimented it. But looking back, they weren’t complimenting me, but my necklace. It was simply too warm and too deep for my colour season colouring.
I still love it, honestly. But now I understand what it does visually whenever I wear it.
And that’s an important distinction: sometimes jewellery doesn’t enhance us — we become a display stand for the jewellery instead but it's ok if we don't mind it.
Another thing worth mentioning is that people often misunderstand metal temperatures. Silver, for example, isn’t always fully cool-toned; some silver can be surprisingly neutral and therefore work beautifully on warmer complexions too.
You can learn so much more about jewellery and metal colours in our colour analysis guide book! 25 pages of irreplacable tips and advice on your unique colouring. Best shades, best styles, best hair dyes, best makeup. Learn more about it below.
Can I Compare White vs Non-White To Determine My Colour Season?
Interestingly, this test is less about warmth versus coolness and more about saturation.
If bright white looks especially harmonious on you, there’s a good chance your colouring handles saturation well. In many cases ivory may still work too, it just creates a softer overall mood.
So this test is often more helpful for understanding whether your colouring is vivid (saturated colours) or muted (soft colours) rather than purely warm or cool.
By the way, we have the extremely useful blog post on it too:
Can I Use AI Colour Analysis To Find My Best Colours?
You can but AI colour analysis isn't something to trust unfortunately. The amount of Tiktok videos I’ve seen where obviously warm-toned people get typed by AI as Soft Summers is honestly unbelievable. The problem is that human colouring simply doesn’t work the way AI currently analyses it. Official colour systems themselves already disagree on temperature classifications for certain shades. AI then tries to simplify everything even further.
When it comes to AI colour analysis, the struggles are with:
• visual harmony
• subtle skin changes
• lighting conditions
• contrast levels
• natural saturation
AI can’t truly see whether your skin becomes brighter, clearer, more lifted, or more tired in a colour. It tends to generalise people very harshly.
And if your photograph is warm-toned because of sunset lighting or camera processing, AI may instantly decide that you are warm-toned too, whereas an experienced human eye can usually recognise that it’s simply the lighting.
The biggest danger is this:
If you are incorrectly typed as a soft colour season and begin surrounding your face with muted colours, eventually you will start looking muted yourself, but not in a flattering way.
Even highly saturated complexions can appear dull in the wrong colours.
And please… don’t use ChatGPT for colour analysis alone. Remember: it was originally designed for language generation, not facial harmony analysis. It doesn’t truly “see” your complexion the way a trained eye does, it mostly extracts approximate colour information from images. This is why we've created our colour analysis quiz ourselves based on our observations and experience. Try it here:
Can I Find My Best Colour Palette By Picking Out Hues and Shades of My Face?
Manually picking colours from photographs in Photoshop isn’t much better than AI colour analysis.
We all used to do this at some point.
When I tried it on myself years ago, the palette I extracted was unbelievably dull. Greyish, muted, soft… But of course it was.
The photo had been taken on a cloudy day. Human colouring naturally contains softness anyway:
• our lips aren’t naturally neon fuchsia
• our eyes aren’t pure electric blue
• our skin contains greys, browns, olives, pinks
So naturally the extracted palette looked muted and immediately convinced me I must be a Soft Summer or Soft Autumn colour season.
This is exactly why context and harmony matter so much more than isolated colour picking.
So what about draping to find your best colours? As promised, here's how to do it with a few green fabrics near your face.
Which Shades of Green Should You Use for Draping to Find Your Undertone in Colour Analysis?
These two shades of green will help you determine whether your undertone leans warm or cool which helps a lot when it comes to colour analysis. At first, both may feel “okay” or “wrong” depending on your colour depth since they are mid-tone shades, they can initially seem suitable if your natural colouring is also mid-tone.
However, over time the difference becomes clear.
The wrong shade will make you look slightly dull or pale, or create unwanted shadows on your face. The right shade, on the other hand, will enhance your features, brighten your complexion, and make your eye colour stand out beautifully.
Find The Right Shades of Green For Your Colour Season
You can try any of these shades of green too, depending on whether your colouring is light or deep, soft or saturated:
We hope that this guide will help you find your undertone, colour season and the best colours for your wardrobe. And if not, why not to book our personalised colour analysis where we'll analyse your photos and let you know what shades of green and not only are your truly best colours.
