Color analysis

Color analysis (American English; colour analysis in Commonwealth English), also known as personal color analysis (PCA), seasonal color analysis, or skin-tone matching, is a term often used within the cosmetics and fashion industry to describe a method of determining the colors of clothing, makeup, hair style that harmonizes with a person's skin complexion, eye color, and hair color for use in wardrobe planning and style consulting. It is generally agreed that the wrong colors will draw attention to such flaws as wrinkles or uneven skin tone while harmonious colors will enhance the natural beauty of the individual making them appear healthy, brighter, and possible more attractive or put-together.

This article is about color analysis in fashion design. For other uses, see Color analysis (disambiguation).

By the 1920s, a color revolution had occurred in the United States with the development of new color industries and the possibility of producing color swatch books used as a marketing tool. Personal color analysis reached a height in popularity in the early 1980s with a recent resurgence in the 2010s after further development and promotion of different versions of seasonal analysis by image and color consultants worldwide. Seasonal analysis is a technique that attempts to place individual coloring into the tonal groupings of Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn, and their sub-variants. However, the approach can vary greatly among different schools of thought. Some color analysis systems classify an individual's personal combination of hair color, eye color and skin tone using labels that refer to a color's "temperature" (cool blue vs. warm yellow) and the degree to which the hair, skin and eye colors contrast. Cosmetic colors are often determined by hair or eye color alone.

The successful practical application of a color analysis will theoretically allow the individual to coordinate their clothing and accessories with greater ease and avoid costly mistakes by purchasing items that are not within their color palette. However, color analysis has continued to be controversial due to the lack of standard training or degree required to market oneself as a color analyst. This can become costly for the individual, both in regard to the fees of professional and less than professional analyses, and subsequent clothing and cosmetics purchases.

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