How to Find the Best Patterns for Your Body & Facial Features

Woman showing off her pattern and color mixing skills.

Sometimes you might have a piece of clothing that you think should work for you and yet something is just off. The colors are all right, the shape is right, but something is wrong. 

It could be that the pattern is not right for you.

If you don’t know your undertone and your depth, chroma, and contrast, then go back to this post about finding your undertone and overtone and this post about determining your depth, chroma, and contrast, do that right now. Then come back here to figure out your best patterns.

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If you’re new here, I’m Missy of Simplified Wardrobe, an Ethical Personal Stylist & Capsule Wardrobe Curator. I help ambitious and eco-conscious womxn who want to look great, feel confident, and simplify their lives.

Find more information about personal style, capsule wardrobes, and color analysis over on Instagram. You can also download my free 10-page Guide to Defining your Personal Style.

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Pattern

First of all, you always want to make sure that all (or at least most) of the colors in a particular pattern are colors that fit your color type. That is, they have the right undertone, saturation, and depth for your coloring. Assuming those are all correct, there are a few additional factors that go into figuring out if a pattern is going to work for you: contrast, scale, and quality. We'll go through each one.

Contrast

Graphic showing low, medium, and high contrast patterns.

You should already know your level of contrast. If you don’t, go back to this post about finding your depth, chroma, and contrast. If you already know, then this one is easy! For a pattern to work well on you, you want to make sure that it has the right level of contrast for your coloring. See graphic showing levels of contrast in a pattern.

If you have naturally high contrast, go for high contrast patterns. If you have low contrast, you want to keep contrast low in the patterns you wear, especially near your face.

That's it. Pretty simple.

Scale

Up next, you have to figure out the right scale for your face and body. This one is more of an art than a science, since scale is about balancing all of your proportions. A small scale person in a large print will be overwhelmed whereas a larger scale person in a small print will look too precious (borderline juvenile). See graphic if small, medium, and large pints.

Things to look at:

• Height—a short person should generally wear smaller prints; tall person, large prints

• Bone density—are your bones and limbs small or more robust?

• Facial features—if your features are small and delicate, you should wear smaller prints; if they're larger and more prominent, go with larger prints. See graphic showing an example of small, medium, and large facial features.

Examples:

Graphic showing women with small, medium, and large facial features.

• Gwyneth Paltrow has fairly small features, and she’s fairly thin and small-boned, so she looks best in very small patterns.

• Olivia Munn has medium sized features, and while she’s thin, her bones are medium. She looks best in medium sized prints.

• Minding Kaling has larger facial features. She is petite, but has larger bone structure and a full-figured body, so she can wear medium to large prints.

If you have a mix (say you're tall but small boned with medium sized facial features), go with medium sized prints.

Quality

This is not about high or low quality. Quality here means the properties of a print on a scale of geometric to organic. For this, you're going to look again at the quality of your facial features. Are they softer or more angular? Or somewhere in between?

• Olivia Wilde has an extremely angular face—her chin, nose, and cheekbones look almost sharp, and her eyes are pointed almonds. She looks best in geometric patterns with crisp angles and lines that accentuate the lines in her face. She can soften her look by wearing organic patterns.

• Eva Mendez has some angular qualities, like her nose and chin, but also some soft qualities, like her eyes, cheeks and mouth. She's somewhere in the middle. She looks best in patterns with soft geometry (like subtle polkadots or stripes) or a mix of geometric and organic shapes.

• Gabrielle Union has very soft features—her face is almost perfectly round, her cheeks and eyes are also round and her lips are full. She looks best in very organic prints, like florals, that mimic the shapes in her face. She can harden her look by wearing more geometric patterns.

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At this point, you know all there is to know about the best colors, patterns, and color combinations to wear for your natural coloring and features.

• You learned your undertone and which hues to wear.

• You learned about your depth, chroma, and contrast.

• And you learned your best patterns in terms of contrast, scale, and quality.

All you need to do now is put the pieces together. Combine your hues with your depth and chroma to figure out the exact colors to wear (for example: cool, muted, and deep colors). Combine those colors with what you know about contrast, scale, and shape to figure out how to put colors together into outfits and patterns (for example: high contrast, small, and geometric patterns and shapes).

Still Need Help?

Using all of the tips above to analyze your natural coloring, you should be able to get a better sense of the colors, combinations, and patterns that work best for you. However, if you find that you don’t have time or are getting stuck somewhere in the process and want to get the help of a professional eye, plus tons of tips on which metals you should wear, what hair colors look best, and what colors you should absolutely avoid, I do offer Virtual Color Analysis. You’ll get a 6-page PDF all about you and what colors, patterns, neutrals, color combinations, hair colors, jewelry, and more will make you shine.

Colors sorted? I also offer Virtual Styling Services that will get your wardrobe, and your confidence, into shape!

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