How to Look Striking in the Color Gray

How many of you think that the col­or gray is bor­ing? That it lacks emo­tion? Or that it lacks strength?
The truth is, gray can be sub­tle and provoca­tive—you just need to know how to inspire it!

Accord­ing to Joanne Allen, author of “Show­ing Your Col­ors,” she says,

“We tend to con­sid­er grey a seri­ous neu­tral with a min­i­mum of per­son­al­i­ty. When grey is worn alone—in a flan­nel busi­ness suit, for instance—the words “anony­mous” and “bor­ing” come to mind.”1

How­ev­er, depend­ing on the shade and the way it is com­bined with anoth­er col­or, it can be author­i­ta­tive, neu­tral, inno­v­a­tive, uncon­ven­tion­al or subtle.

We just need to get the right gray with the right person.

Your best gray:

Is the same val­ue as your hair

Mix­es well with your col­or quality

Or relates to either your hair, skin, and/or eyes

 

We look best in many col­ors that are the same val­ue as our hair.

So, if you have dark hair, you can wear more col­ors that are dark­er than some­one who has light hair.

And if you let your hair go nat­ur­al as you age, it gets lighter—and you also start to look bet­ter in lighter col­ors and sil­ver grays. You may not believe me, but keep this in mind as your read further.

When we talk about col­or, we describe it by these elements:

What is its VALUE? Val­ue is the light­ness or dark­ness of a col­or. (Dark, Mid­tone, Light)

What is its INTENSITY or COLOR QUALITY? It is the bright­ness or dull­ness of a col­or. Exam­ples are:

• Brights (Pure)
• Jew­el Toned (Slight­ly Shaded)
• Pas­tel (Tint­ed)
• Dark­er Col­ors — Bright Neu­tral (Shad­ed)
• Soft Neu­tral (Grayed)

What is its HUE? Hue is the col­or. Hue and Col­or are interchangeable.

Is Your Gray LIGHT, MIDTONE, or DARK? The fash­ion world thinks of Gray in three val­ue as rep­re­sent­ed by:

• Sil­ver Gray
• Medi­um Gray
• Char­coal

Sil­ver Gray makes lighter hair col­or shine.
Accord­ing to Jeanne Allen, “Sil­ver Gray is light and bright for a grey. It is a cool and refresh­ing col­or that acts almost like a pas­tel. The soft­ness and clar­i­ty of this shade encour­age the col­or per­son­al­i­ty pas­tels (fig­ure 1–5) and mid-tone brights (fig­ure 6–15) to shine forth. The pleas­ant effect of these mix­tures is notice­able on a cloudy day when col­ors take on a marked inten­si­ty and depth in the soft grey light.”

I could not agree more. Those who can wear sil­ver-gray need soft­ness and clar­i­ty too. They also have a light inher­ent val­ue, mean­ing their hair is light to medi­um-light in val­ue. They can also have hair in the range of ash blonde, raw umber blonde, sil­ver-blonde, or light to medi­um gray.

Sil­ver grey works well on women who can wear pas­tels. They include Spring sea­son­al type and some Sum­mers who are mut­ed with gray.

Those women who have nat­u­ral­ly dark hair can only start wear­ing sil­ver-gray as their nat­ur­al gray comes into their hair.

 

 

Char­coal Gray is a work­horse neu­tral – The new black!

Char­coal Gray is the dark­est gray. It is close to black with­out being black. And accord­ing to Jeanne Allen, “Char­coal Grey is a sub­tle and provoca­tive col­or that offers the depth and dra­ma of black with­out the harsh­ness. When black is too strong, this is the col­or to choose. Char­coal not only mix­es com­fort­ably with brights (fig­ure 1–7), it offers a sophis­ti­cat­ed and inter­est­ing image when com­bined with jew­el tones (fig­ures 11–15).”

Char­coal Grey is an amaz­ing neu­tral for those who have dark to medi­um dark hair. It can be com­bined with not only brights and mid­tones to stand out. But for those with soft­er or rich­er col­or­ing, it com­bines with your col­ors too.

Note this mod­el has a dark inher­ent value.

The dark­er val­ued col­ors res­onate with her. She is wear­ing both sil­ver gray and char­coal gray. She looks great in the dark­er char­coal jack­et and black top. But the lighter skirt seems out of place on her. Our eye is drawn to the skirt and not to here. Big mistake.

 

“Your clothes should sup­port you and your good looks. If they don’t then they are not your clothes.” —Mary Lou.

Medi­um Gray looks great with its match­ing hue.
Medi­um Gray as you may have guessed is between sil­ver and char­coal and can coor­di­nate with all col­or and col­or qual­i­ties for sil­ver and charcoal.

So which medi­um gray do you pick to wear?
You pick the one that has the same hues or “hue par­ent” or “under­tone” you have. For­get about val­ue. Now look at the color—or hue—of the gray. Each gray has a “par­ent” hue or col­or at its base. The hue or col­or is a col­or on the col­or wheel—magenta, red, orange, yel­low, green, blue, or vio­let that was neu­tral­ized to make that gray.

If this con­cept is new to you, try this:
Take some­thing that is gray and put it next to some­thing else that is gray. Take a long look. You’ll notice that one may look a lit­tle blue than the oth­er one. This is called the under­tone. So, when choos­ing a medi­um gray, make sure it has an under­tone that coor­di­nates with one of your per­son­al col­ors. A per­son­al col­or is your eye col­or, your hair col­or, or your skin tone.

If you have blue eyes, then a blue-gray may be just per­fect on you. If you have gold­en-brown skin, a grey that has a slight gold­en under­tone would be per­fect. Yes, you’ve seen that gray, it is the one that looks dirty when you hold it up to a blue-gray—but it is the one that goes with your warmer skin.

Take a look at this wom­an’s gray hair and the hues that match:

To illus­trate a point, we are using a paint sam­ple from Ben­jamin Moore, See that the paint sam­ple, Rock Gray, is blue-gray and it is like the col­or of her hair. Dark Pewter is a blue-vio­let gray which is also in her hair color.

 

 

 

Rock Gray is blue-gray and it is the col­or of her hair. Dark Pewter is a blue-vio­let gray which is also in her hair color.

 

Now take a look at my hair col­or’s hues.

“Ged­dy Gray” works well since it’s in my hair col­or, as well as the oth­er gray col­or. Green-gray works well for me, too!

 

 

 

 

This gray also works well with the dark of my hair. You may find oth­er names for this gray such as “Char­coal” or “Ash.”

 

 

 

 

Next, let’s look at this woman.

Gray is not the first col­or I would advise her to wear. But if she real­ly need­ed one, it needs to be orange-red much like the “Choco­late Pud­ding” col­or below.

Of course, it may be dif­fi­cult for some of you to dis­tin­guish grays since the col­or hue in gray is so sub­tle. If you need help pick­ing your gray col­ors, I’ll be glad to help you!

Call me at 650–400-2230, and we’ll set up an appoint­ment to go over your col­ors via ZOOM or in an out­door location!

1By the way, the inspi­ra­tion and many col­or con­cepts for this blog came from a clas­sic book “Show­ing your Col­ors” by Jeanne Allen. The author dis­cussed a cloth­ing line called Jeanne-Marc and how fash­ion design­ers thought about the col­ors for the upcom­ing sea­son. Pub­lished in 1985, Jean­ne’s insights are strik­ing­ly cur­rent. If you do not own this book, you should.