As a guy, it can feel somewhat limiting looking at your options in buying and wearing clothes. Do you wear your t-shirt or your long sleeve shirt? Your sweater or your other jumper? And is getting blue chinos kind of pointless if you already have like six pairs of blue jeans? From my experience, the best way to my your wardrobe stand out is by applying colour schemes that go well together using the colour wheel.
Primary Secondary and Tertiary Colours
The first thing to know is what primary, secondary, and (if your feeling ambitious) tertiary colours are. Primary colours are the three colours that all other colours are made up of (red, yellow, and blue), secondary colours are the three colours which are an even mix between two primary colours (i.e. green is a mix between blue and yellow, orange is a mix between yellow and red etc.). Tertiary colours are harder to spot but they are essentially the colours between primary and secondary colours. This is where it starts to feel like your shopping for paint in Deluxe so I’ll just move on.
Common Colour Schemes˘
Now that we have a basic understanding of what each of the colours are and where they are on the colour wheel, let’s look at some common colour schemes you can apply to your wardrobe.
Triadic (Colours One Third Apart): This one’s pretty straightforward when you simply keep in mind that the primary colours go well with other primary colours and secondary colours go well with other secondary colours.
Examples: Red and Blue, Green and Purple
Complimentary (Colours on The Opposite End of the Wheel): The key to good colour schemes is to make each colour stand out in a way that compliments each colour you choose. complimentary colour utilises this by applying two colours as far away from each other on the wheel as possible.
Examples: Yellow and Purple, Blue and Orange
Analogous (Colours Beside Eachother on the Wheel): I personally find this one the hardest to get right. Colours getting too close to one another is when clashing can occur but a safe way to apply analogous colour schemes is to use the triadic colour scheme and wear the colour in the middle.
Examples: Purple Blue and Red, Green Yellow and Blue,
Monochromatic (One Colour): Any
I know I know, after all that, the final scheme I tell you revolves around sticking to one colour. But picking a strong colour that suits you is still an option you shouldn’t overlook. It’s more effective for dresses or if your wearing black.
Examples: Literally just pick a colour and you’re done
There’s more to colour theory than simply picking colour schemes and knowing primary and secondary colours, you’ve probably noticed the lack of brown black and grey in the colour wheel. There’s also saturation (intensity of the colour) and shade (how light/dark the colour is) but the fundamentals of the colour wheel is a great place to start with in order to expand your wardrobe.