Your clothes are on, you’ve got your shoes on, and you’ve grabbed your bag. But something feels slightly off. You don’t know exactly what’s wrong, just that the colors seem slightly louder, flatter, or not quite tied together like they did when they were hanging separately in your closet. This is the time that you can use color balance, because it’s one of the things that you can change and that can actually fix that feeling without taking everything off.
Color balance has very little to do with knowing color theory and all to do with everyday style and what you notice first. Look in the mirror and notice which color in your outfit is the most dominant; this could be a bright sweater, a printed skirt, a black shoe that stands out more than you thought, your cream bag, or your red lipstick. You may need to take it down a peg if they are all competing at once (it’s too busy), or add some contrast if nothing pops out enough (it’s too flat). These are not necessarily a problem with your outfit; more likely, you just need more support for one color, or you need to take a step back from one of the colors.
You can look at your outfit in three parts: top, bottom, and finishing pieces. The top is everything that goes on top, shirts, sweaters, coats, scarves, anything on your upper half (or in other words, what you see closer to your face). The bottom is anything that goes on your bottom half, from pants to skirts to dresses below the waist, to tights and your socks that you can see. The finishing pieces are the shoes, bag, belt, jewelry, and coat, anything that isn’t part of the top or bottom section. If everything in these sections is very different from each other and you don’t notice, then it feels as though you threw on your colors without thought. You need to connect things together with a bit of contrast (like matching a brown belt to a brown shoe) or a bit of similarity (like matching a cream bag to a cream knit), or introduce a little accent color (like in earrings or a scarf) that repeats another part of your outfit without repeating it so much that it gets loud.
If you have a window where your natural light is, look at your outfit there instead of in the dimly lit hallway mirror. Taking a quick selfie with your phone can help you spot these things even if you don’t keep or share the photo. It’s just another way for you to be able to see what your colors and the proportion looks like to someone else from a distance. Some colors seem more calming under indoor lighting than they do in daylight. Black and navy may actually feel closer in color than they did at first. Beige, cream, gray, and white can all seem different based on the fabric thickness and whether the shade is more cool or warm. While your mirror check lets you see your outfit moving and in motion, your phone photo will let you see your colors as if they are all in one photo.
The first thing you can try is to remove something rather than replace it if your color feels loud or too busy. Take out a piece of jewelry, use a more muted bag instead of one with bright colors, or change your shoes for a more neutral shade. On the other hand, you can do a similar thing if your color feels too calm, add one element to bring in some contrast to your outfit. You can add a belt, add a scarf, add a colored bag, add a lip gloss, add a pair of colorful earrings, or change your shoe to a color other than your normal neutral. It’s not about bringing attention everywhere; it’s about bringing attention somewhere, and usually, one color pops more than a few colors all trying to grab attention at once. Colors become much more wearable if they serve a purpose.
You can get an idea of what that looks like by adding one color to a neutral outfit (let’s say pants, a sweater, shoes), and seeing if you have space for a green bag or a red scarf. Do you need to add a second color, or does your green bag already do that well enough? It will almost certainly help you dial it back if you find yourself wanting to do that, which is good if you want to create restraint in your own wardrobe without making it boring.
Before you leave, just take a second and think: Is my color choice actually helping my outfit come together? You should be able to see the main color, and then see where the secondary neutrals work in, and then the finishing details should stand out without needing an explanation. If you’re able to do that while you’re getting ready in your home mirror, then you’re good to go; you won’t have to spend the whole day changing colors around if they weren’t right in the first place.