BASICS OF FASHION 101: Complementary colors

You really don't have to be a fashion designer or a stylist to be able to match your own outfit colors. 

Just not to look fashionable, but also look beautiful and presentable, it's very important to be able to match colors of your outfits. 

Pairing colors can make or break your outfit, but you don't want to stick to plain and regular color combinations because of the uneasiness that comes with experimenting and getting it wrong. 

Color combination, although very tricky, is also relatively easy to understand if learnt correctly. By the end of this article, I am sure you will understand colors better and be able to match your colors like a pro!

The two things that will be considered in this post are:

THE COLOR WHEEL

COLOR HARMONY

THE COLOR WHEEL

The color wheel was invented by Isaac Newton in the 18th century. The color wheel consists of the primary, secondary and tertiary or intermediate colors.

Primary colors

Blue, Red and Yellow. These are the basic colors, the bedrocks of every other color. no color can be mixed to get the primary colors. 

Secondary colors

Green. Violet. Orange. These colors are gotten from mixing two primary colors together. 

Tertiary colors

Also called intermediate color. They're gotten from mixing primary and secondary colors together. They are colors like yellow orange, red orange, red Violet, blue Violet, blue green, yellow green. 

WARM AND COOL COLORS

The color wheel can be divided into two; warm and cool colors. Warm colors make things look smaller, the type of color you want to wear to look slimmer. They are colors like red, orange, yellow, red orange and yellow orange.

Cool colors are soothing colors. Colors like blue, purple, green, blue green, blue Violet.

NEUTRAL COLORS

plain and subdued colors. colors like beige, brown, nude, off white, white, black.

COLOR HARMONY

Color harmony is simply how to style the colors you have now learnt about. Let's take a look at different ways to style.

COMPLIMENTARY COLORS

These are colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel. These colors contrast and they go perfectly with each other.

TRIADIC COLORS

The colors equidistant from each other are said to be 'Triadic'. Mixing these three colors to form a perfect outfit will never not be a success.

STICKING TO A FAMILY

This is just wearing different shades of a particular color. You would have seen it and you know it is bomb! For example, wearing a dark brown top/tank, a lighter shade for the cargo and jacket, another shade for the belt and shoe, now tell me that outfit is not something straight out of a Vogue magazine!

SPLIT COMMENTARY COLORS

This is simply picking the two colors at the right and left side the original complimentary on the color wheel and put them all together to make a cute outfit.

MONOCHROME

Monochrome is wearing the same shade of a color from head to toe, mind you, this one is very tricky but all you just need is the confidence to rock it.

MATCH WITH YOUR SKIN TONE

If you have a yellow or pale skin tone, you can wear cooler shades like blue, Violet and green and if you have a deeper skin tone, you can wear warm tones like yellow or Amber.

NEUTRALS

Also if you're like an introvert or you're just someone that doesn't like going all out with colors, you can always stick with neutral colors like black, beige, white, pastels, brown among others. Neutrals always match each other and you can never go wrong with them.

Bottom line is, it's actually very easy to match colors. You only need to understand the concept of colors and get creative.