How Dressing According To Your Contrast Level Can Make You Look More Attractive

The term “contrast level” can sound like a scientific label that involves numbers and calculations, but it’s actually very simple. When it comes to figuring out your own contrast level, this refers to the difference between your skin, hair, and eye colors. Depending on how light or dark each of these features is in relation to each other, you can be someone with low, medium, or high contrast. All it takes to identify your personal contrast level is a look in the mirror.

Analyzing Your Features

One of the easiest ways to figure out your contrast level is to take a picture of yourself in good lighting and place a black-and-white filter over it. By doing so, you’ll be able to see more clearly whether your features tend to blend into the same color gradient or are strikingly different from one another in value. A TikTok by influencer Isabelle Lux (@isabel.lux) breaks down how to analyze your features and figure out which contrast level they fall into.

Someone with low contrast will find that their features tend to blend in with each other. An example of a celebrity with low contrast is Jennifer Lopez: She has tan skin, light brown eyes, and light brown hair. Her features are all more or less in the same color family. As a result, low contrast outfits – outfits where the colors don’t differ much from each other – best highlight her natural beauty. Below, she is wearing an off-white top with a beige matching set. These colors are so similar that they almost look the exact same. The effect of this outfit would be much different if her top was a bright white and the suit was a harsh black. The soft tones of the clothes complement her soft coloring.

If you’re not into neutrals, being low contrast doesn’t mean that you can’t wear color. The outfit below is a soft shade of pink that isn’t overpowering on her because she hasn’t added anything high contrast to accessorize with, like a neon yellow bag or bright red lipstick. The entire ensemble, from her makeup to her dress, aligns with the same palette. When it comes to dressing for your contrast level, what matters more than an individual color choice is the overall effect of the ensemble. Low contrast beauties pull off monochrome looks better than anyone else.

Someone with high contrast, like Anne Hathaway, will have eyes, skin, and hair that vary more from one another in their coloring. Anne has fair skin that contrasts greatly with her dark hair and eyes. Because her natural features already possess so much contrast, she can wear a lot of contrast in her outfits without looking harsh or overdone. A high contrast individual will look most harmonious when they wear varying colors and combine them together. The outfit below, from cult classic The Devil Wears Prada (2006), combines black and white in a way that would look too discordant on someone with low contrast. Thanks to Anne’s high contrast features, she looks radiant instead of harsh in this tricky color combo.

What happens if you don’t dress for your contrast level? Unfortunately, you can end up dimming your natural beauty rather than highlighting it. In the look below, Anne is wearing a brown leather dress without any other color in the look to create some sort of contrast. Of course, she looks beautiful as always, but the outfit fights with her features instead of complementing them – you notice how jarring the dress is before you notice Anne herself. By pairing more high contrast accessories with this outfit, like a blazer or a belt of a different color, Anne could have created a look that would be more harmonious on her.

Of course, contrast level is a spectrum, and you may not be purely high or low in contrast. Some people will fall on extreme ends of the spectrum, while others will land at some place in the middle, but understanding which side you lean toward will help you create outfits that bring out the best in your individual features.

Cultivating a Contrast-Appropriate Wardrobe 

If you’ve been oblivious to your contrast level all this time, that doesn’t mean you have to get rid of everything that’s already in your wardrobe and start from scratch. You can make almost any garment work for your contrast level if you understand how to style it so that the rest of the outfit brings it into harmony with your features.

For example, if you’re high contrast but find that you have many low contrast pieces in your wardrobe, you can add contrast through your accessories. The closer the accessories are to your face – scarves, headbands, earrings – the more powerful an effect they’ll have on the way they accentuate your features. Accessorizing with high contrast, electrifying shades will add the touch of boldness that a low contrast outfit will be lacking on you.

Inversely, if you’re low contrast with many high contrast clothes, you can diminish their contrast by pairing like colors. Pairing bright white pants with an equally bright top of a different color – flaming red, for example – will be double the overpowering dose. Blake Lively is a shining example of dressing for your low contrast level: She’s not afraid to go bold and bright, but she makes sure that the difference in color between individual pieces is kept at a minimum. In this outfit, she’s wearing three separate pieces – a sweater, a blazer, and a pair of pants – that are all the same shade of neon green.

If you’re still confused about the nuances of contrast, I recommend checking out this in-depth YouTube video by AlyArt, a prominent YouTuber who has gained a large following for her styling advice. Aly explains the full spectrum of contrast, from low to high to everything in between, using different models and ethnicities to illustrate her points across a numbered scale.

Closing Thoughts

Of course, contrast level is just one element of building a stylish and flattering wardrobe for you. When considered alongside other factors such as color season, body type, and personal style, it can be a powerful tool to elevate your clothing choices!

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