I see many followers and also color consultants with doubts about the subject of personal contrast.
“What is contrast? How to discover it? How do I know if I have high, medium or low contrast?” These are just some of the questions they send me almost daily.
In fact, the subject of natural contrast, at first, may sound a little abstract.
But I guarantee that if you understand the fundamentals that I will teach in this article well, and start doing the exercises proposed here, everything will become much easier.
You will be able to apply contrast in your routine in stamps, eyeglass frames, makeup, clothes, hair, accessories…
What is personal contrast?
As I said, to know how to use contrast in everyday life, you need to understand its fundamentals.
By definition, personal contrast is the difference in tone between hair (including the eyebrow), skin and eyes. In other words, it is the difference between light and dark that we have in our beauty.
It works like a print of our face.
And, as in Personal Coloring, we work with the principle of harmony, we always try to repeat our contrast, especially in areas close to the face, such as hair, makeup and accessories.
In personal contrast, we must also evaluate which is the light and which is the dark of each beauty. This is something individual, which must be analyzed with caution. What is dark for me may be intermediate for you…
What are the types of contrast?
In general, we work with four types of contrast:
- light low
- deep low
- Medium
- High
However, in some situations, we may have people who are in a transition zone between two of them. For example: a person who has medium to high contrast can wear prints of these two contrasts more easily.
What does each of the contrasts mean?
There are four nomenclatures, but what do they mean?
Light Low
Light low contrast is one in which there is little difference, more precisely 1 to 3 tones between hair, skin and eyes. And the set of these tones is made up of light colors, that is, with greater addition of white in the composition.
Deep Low
For many years, Personal Coloring literature only worked with the concept of low contrast. However, when studying, I realized that because this literature is mostly European, the low contrast was only related to light skin and lighter hair.
That’s how, to embrace a greater diversity of skins and after specializing in Brazilian miscegenation, I developed the concept of deep low contrast for the Studio Immagine Personal Coloring Method.
People who have this contrast, as well as light low, also have similar, close hair, eye and skin colors, with a difference of up to 3 tones. The big difference is that the color set of this beauty is mostly dark, that is, with more black added.
Medium
Medium contrast is where there is an intermediate difference in tones between skin, hair and eyes, ranging from 4 to 6 tones.
As with low contrast, we can also assess whether the set of tones is predominantly light or dark.
High
In high contrast, we see a large difference in tones in the skin, hair and eyes. From the darkest to the lightest point, there can be more than 6 shades of difference.
What are the most common contrasts in each color palette?
Contrast is the starting point for defining the color palette. However, alone, it doesn’t make any diagnosis, okay?
Just to give you an idea, we can find Medium Contrast in all 12 cards of the Expanded Seasonal Personal Coloring Method.
Below I will leave a table that summarizes the main contrasts found in each card. However, I want to point out that this is a more general classification and that we may also have exceptions!
How to know my personal contrast: step by step
The contrast stage is the only one that you can, in part, do alone at home and I will show you step by step:
- In natural lighting, facing the window, take a photo of your face, covering mainly your dyed hair, if you have any.
- Then go to Editing mode and choose the Saturation option. You should reset the saturation of the photo, leaving it in gray scale.
- Now, it’s time to evaluate the difference between light and dark in your beauty with the help of the gray gradation ruler. Which box/number does your hair color fit into (if your hair is dyed, evaluate your eyebrows)? And what about the eyes? And the color of the skin?
- Having written down the numbers, evaluate the difference between the darkest point of your beauty and the lightest.
- If the difference from highest to lowest is 1 to 3, you probably have low contrast. From 4 to 6, it will possibly have a medium contrast. With more than 6 differences, yours will certainly be a high contrast.
Some VERY important information when taking the photo:
- See if the lighting is correct or if your face is shadowed. Just in case, I recommend taking more than one photo.
- Also note aspects such as the oiliness of your hair, which can make it a little darker. Or if your hair has some type of gel on it.
- Do not use black and white filters, just Edit > Saturation > Resetting all saturation and leaving the photo in grayscale.
For all these reasons, having the experience and evaluation of a Consultant specialized in Colors to help confirm this result is very important.
It will guide, in the best possible way, how to apply contrast and relate it to the colors in the color palette.
Contrast in the Personal Coloring test
In the Studio Immagine Personal Coloring Method, we always start the color test with the client’s personal contrast analysis.
The first step is precisely to evaluate, by photo, as I taught above, the difference in tones in the client’s beauty.
But throughout our testing, to ensure the reliability of the result, we checked each step. In contrast, this check is done with Contrast Stamped Fabrics.
Remember I said that contrast works like a print on our face? This means that, to achieve harmony, the stamped fabric must serve as a continuation of the print on the client’s face.
Therefore, we have light low contrast, deep low contrast, medium and high contrast fabrics.
How to apply in everyday life?
Theory ✅
But how to take all this into everyday life? What does the contrast imply in practice?
Knowledge of personal contrast helps to define:
- Hair tones
- Makeup
- Clothing stamps
- eyeglass frames
- Image strategy
Contrast in hair tones
We can apply the concept to hair. And here we must pay close attention so as not to make mistakes during the evaluation.
There are more than 10 base shades of hair and I see that often, when assessing whether a hair is light or dark, people make a mistake in the diagnosis.
I take my own hair as an example: a lot of people end up saying that it is dark when, in fact, it is a Dark Blonde tone which, within the hair classification, is still considered a light tone.
Another important factor in hair analysis is harmony.
If harmony is repetition, ideally, we should repeat and respect our contrast, keeping our hair in tones that don’t make it look too thin or too long.
However, with the help of a Color Consultant, you can make changes to your hair with an image strategy in mind.
I bring Jade Picon as an example, an influencer who was at BBB 22. Naturally, Jade has a medium to high contrast.
However, we have already seen it in different hair phases.
When she decided to lighten her hair to a platinum blonde tone, she radically lowered its contrast, which consequently represented a significant change in her natural characteristics.
Notice how the change in contrast left her with a more tired appearance.
“Ah, Lu, so is it wrong for me to radically change my contrast?”, I get asked this a lot when I give these examples.
And the answer is: it depends! What is your objective with this change?
Probably, in Jade’s case, she had an Image Consultant to help her with this transformation. Ultra-light hair conveys more detachment and inaccessibility, a message she may have wanted to convey through the image.
Therefore, before any radical change, what I advise is: think carefully about why you are doing this. If you have a goal, it becomes much easier, even psychologically speaking, to make such a change.
By substantially altering the contrast, you may notice a greater emphasis on dark circles, blemishes and expression lines. So it’s good to also think about how comfortable you feel about all of this.
A solution for those who want to minimize these effects is to compensate with makeup, for example.
Therefore, having the expertise of a color consultant is essential for a safer and more comfortable change of look, aligned with your personal and professional goals.
But let’s get back to Jade…
At the BBB house, she darkened her hair again. In this case, two questions come into play:
- Again, image strategy: nothing is by chance! By returning to its natural contrast, Jade also conveys more accessibility and proximity, which is excellent for a game seen by millions of Brazilians, do you agree?
- Ease of maintenance: if ultra-light blonde already requires super maintenance out here, imagine inside the BBB house, where there are few resources available. The dark tone is much easier to maintain when compared to blonde.
Makeup
Makeup is on our face and, therefore, it is another super important point that we must take into consideration when it comes to contrast.
If you have light low contrast and want to maintain the harmony of your beauty, the ideal would be to repeat these tones in your makeup, as shown in the first photo of Angélica that I separated.
If you use high-contrast makeup, such as very black, smoky eyes + red lipstick, I like to say that “the makeup will arrive before you”. That is, we will first notice the makeup and only then pay attention to your face.
That’s what happened with the second photo of Angélica. She, who has a natural light low contrast (as in the first photo), by using dark red lipstick with her blonde hair in a lighter tone, increases this contrast.
See how, in this second photo, the first thing you see on her is the red lipstick.
If you have high contrast (very dark hair + light skin) and choose to use a super light lipstick, it will leave you looking tired.
But, once again, everything will depend on the image strategy you want to adopt!
Clothing stamps
When evaluating the stamps, we take into account, just as we do with our photo, the difference between the darkest and lightest tones.
I created a gallery of images that will help you understand and choose the best print taking into account its contrast.
#LuTips: Remember that the stamps that are closest to your face are the ones that have the greatest impact on your beauty!
Eyeglass frames
Have you ever had the feeling of looking at someone and feeling as if their glasses don’t belong to you?
This can happen either because the glasses are too light for her or too dark.
Or, even, be in colors that didn’t belong to your color palette. That’s why I’m talking about the importance of doing a Personal Color Analysis, a unique experience that lasts the rest of your life.
In the analysis, we discover everything about its contrast and also about the best colors for you!
Glasses, as well as makeup and prints, should preferably respect their contrast.
#LuTips: When buying new frames, take a photo of yourself wearing the glasses and apply the step-by-step instructions I taught at the beginning of this article. Edit > Saturation > Remove all Saturation from the Photo. Observe, then, whether the glasses “melt” into their beauty and seem to be a continuation of the pattern on your face or not.
Image Strategy
Mastering contrast is a real help for those who want to understand more about image strategy.
This is because, knowing that high contrast conveys messages of detachment, seriousness, strength and objectivity, and low contrast of proximity, lightness, delicacy and accessibility, you can use them in every visual aspect of your communication.
Knowledge is gold and opens up a range of possibilities.
I love talking about contrast because I know it’s a topic that you also love and ask me for a lot.
A kiss,
Luciana Ulrich.
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