There is a two minute test that will tell you more about whether a colour suits you than any amount of reading about seasons and undertones. You need a top, a mirror and a window. That is the whole list.
It is the first thing I do with every client, and it is also the step most people skip in my free guide, because it sounds far too simple to be doing any real work.
It is doing the work. Here is how to do it properly.
Watch it first
Easier to see than to describe. This is me running the test on my own face, with a colour that works and a colour that very much does not.
How to do the mirror test
- Stand by a window, in daylight Overhead lighting will lie to you, and so will a bathroom bulb. North facing light is ideal. Turn the artificial lights off entirely if you can.
- Take your make-up off, or as much of it as you are willing to Foundation is designed to even out exactly the thing you are trying to look at. It is worth the two minutes.
- Hold the garment up under your chin Close to your face, covering your chest and shoulders. If it is a print or a pattern, this test will not tell you much, so start with solid colours.
- Look at your face, not at the top This is the part everybody gets wrong. The question is never whether you like the colour. It is what the colour is doing to your skin.
- Swap to a second colour and compare A single colour on its own tells you almost nothing. The information is in the difference between two.
What you are actually looking for
When a colour is right
Your face comes forward and the top recedes. Shadows under your eyes soften. The lines around your nose and mouth look less pronounced. Your eyes look clearer. People often say the skin looks smoother, although nothing about the skin has changed at all.
When a colour is wrong
The colour arrives before you do. Shadows deepen under the eyes and around the jaw. Any redness in the skin gets louder. You may look tired, or slightly yellow, or washed out. Very often the reaction is to think you look unwell, and to blame the sleep you had rather than the jumper you are holding.
The tell that convinces people: look at the area under your eyes and along your jawline rather than at the centre of your face. That is where a wrong colour shows up first, and once you have seen it happen you cannot unsee it.
Two things worth knowing
Liking a colour and suiting it are different questions. Some of my favourite colours do nothing for me. I am a Cool Winter, which means the entire warm end of the spectrum, all the terracottas and camels and mustards, is off the table for me no matter how much I admire them on other people. Knowing that has not made me enjoy them less. It has just moved them off my body and onto my cushions.
The test tells you about one colour, not about your palette. It is genuinely useful and it will save you money, but it will not tell you which of the four seasons you sit in, or how much contrast suits you, or which of your neutrals is doing you a disservice. Those need proper light and a full set of drapes held against your skin in sequence. What the mirror test will do is make you much harder to fool in a changing room.
Want the full answer rather than a good guess?
The Colour Confidence Experience is a single unhurried in-person session in Oxfordshire. You leave with your palette, and with real outfits already built from the clothes in your own wardrobe.
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The mirror test is one step inside my free Colour Confidence Outfit Builder, which walks you through finding one colour that genuinely lifts you and building a complete outfit around it, using clothes you already own.