I Got a Color Analysis and It’s the Best “Decluttering Tool” I’ve Ever Tried for My Clothes

When I first saw chatter on Instagram of people getting their “colors done,” it brought me right back to walking in a shopping mall parking lot in the late ‘80s with my mom and one of her best friends. They were talking about colors and seasons, and I knew it had something to do with clothes. Well, just like claw clips and ditsy floral dresses, color analysis is a returning trend. I decided to give it a try — and it had a much bigger impact on my life than I ever expected.

To start, I chose an online color consultation company called Created Colorful after seeing it as a recommendation from one of my favorite Instagrammers, Emily Freeman (@emilypfreeman).

“According to color theory, certain shades naturally harmonize with a person’s undertones, hair, and eye color, while others predictably wash them out or create harsh shadows when worn next to their face,” explains Lindsey Meyers, the founder of Created Colorful.

Her company’s team of color analysts will “observe how a person’s features react to different categories of colors (bright vs. faded, warm vs. cool, and light vs. dark), and match them with the palette that best highlights them. It’s like finding the perfect frame for a priceless piece of art.”

My experience getting my colors done involved sending in many selfies of me draped in various colors of fabric. After a few emails back and forth, in which the consultants asked me to try some specific colors, I got a beautiful, affirming email in return, describing my colors, along with some really helpful tips about how to tell which colors might be mine when picking out clothing. 

As a “soft autumn,” I was told that my best colors are “muted, kind of like the look of clothes that have been washed and dried several times” and that my “best color mantra” was “faded, neutral-warm, and medium deep.”

Meyers says that this process has helped others feel “beautiful in their clothes by learning to highlight their unique features through the colors they wear” — and I completely agree with her. Knowing what my colors are makes me feel put-together and confident, even in my daily “mom uniform.” It’s been a surprising but welcome gift. 

It’s also made it easier to shop, because now I aim to buy things that are within my color palette, so my eye naturally disregards anything outside of it. This narrows my options and streamlines my entire shopping experience.

But there’s another unexpected impact that getting a color analysis has had: It’s helped me pare down my clothing and significantly declutter my closet. I have to point out here that I did not approach my closet with the mindset of getting rid of all clothing that wasn’t in my color. Instead, I felt like knowing my best colors gave me a new perspective. 

I was able to understand why certain articles of clothing always seemed to make me feel good, and why others tended to make me feel blah. Armed with this knowledge, I was able to comb through my closet and dresser and finally cull items that I’d held on to for the wrong reasons. Knowing my colors helped tip the scales so that if I was keeping something because it had been expensive, I’d had it for a long time, or I thought I might wear it in certain situations, I was able to let it go.

The result was not only the benefits of decluttering clothes — extra space and a more curated collection — but also the bonus of having only my very favorite or best pieces fill my closet. By informing my decisions around what I both bring into and subtract from my space, this experience has set me on a path of owning fewer but better clothes. This knowledge has given me so much power and control over how to achieve and maintain a closet full of clothes that make me feel my very best.