Your Fashion Formula
Muted or Bright?
Define your Chroma
Chroma describes how bright/clear or muted/soft a color is. Clear or bright colors are pure colors. These are fully saturated colors.
The more grey is added to a pure color, the more muted it becomes. Muted colors are therefore desaturated, greyed out colors, which are much less intense than their pure counterparts. They are also called tones. So a hot pink would be a pure color because it is fully saturated and vibrant. But a dusky rose would be a tone because it is soft.Â
In other words, this aspect of your coloring determines whether you look better in highly saturated, medium-saturated or desaturated colors. And that will depend on the amount of grey pigments present in your natural coloring.
A high content of grey pigments indicates a muted appearance, whereas the absence of grey pigments creates a bright appearance.
To determine your chroma, you can use this principle: if you are warm and light, you will also be bright. But if you are warm and dark, you are automatically muted.
High Chroma
How to spot high chroma
Individuals with high chroma cannot wear grey (or other fashion neutrals) on its own without becoming dulled and washed out. But they are able to wear highly saturated colors without disappearing behind them.
Low Chroma
How to Spot Low Chroma
Individuals with low chroma have a muted appearance. Hair, skin and eyes have a desaturated, greyish or ashy quality. And there is little to no vibrancy in the features. This type of coloring contains a high amount of grey pigments.
In addition, the contrast between the features tends to be quite low due to the lack of saturation.
