Assessing Your Contrast Level: A Simple Guide

Understanding your natural contrast level can be key to finding the colours that flatter you most. It's all about evaluating how different your hair, skin, and eyes are from one another in terms of lightness and darkness. Here's how to assess your contrast level with a simple method:

Step 1: Take a Black and White Photo

First, take a photo of yourself without makeup in natural light. Use the black and white filter on your phone or computer to remove any colour distractions, so you can focus on the contrast between your facial features: your hair, skin, and eyes.

Step 2: Assign Values to Your Features

‍
Look at your photo and evaluate the brightness of your skin, hair, and eyes on a scale of 1 to 10:
1 represents the darkest shade.
10 represents the lightest shade.

For example, let’s say in the photo:
Skin = 9 (very light)
Hair = 2 (very dark)
Eyes = 8 (quite light)

(Squint while looking at your black and white photo to help blur the details and better determine where each feature—hair, skin, and eyes—falls on the Contrast Scale.) This will make it easier to assess the lightness or darkness of each feature and accurately assign values.

Step 3: Calculate Your Contrast Level

Now, take the highest value from your three features (in this case, skin = 9) and subtract the lowest value (hair = 2). The formula is:  
9 - 2 = 7

Step 4: Determine Your Contrast Level

Using your result, you can figure out where you fall on the contrast scale:

Low Contrast: 1 - 3
Medium Contrast: 4 - 6
High Contrast: 7 - 10

In our example, the result is 7, meaning this person has High Contrast between their hair, skin, and eyes.

Why Does Contrast Matter?

Your contrast level helps determine which Season you belong to.

‍

Try our Free Colour Quiz to discover the colours that suit you best.

‍