By this point, I was fairly confident I was cool-toned. That part, surprisingly, had become the easier conclusion to reach. But understanding my undertone was only one piece of the puzzle. The harder question was how bright, or how muted, I actually am.
Today, looking at myself in the mirror, it feels silly there ever was a doubt. However, once upon a time things did not feel so obvious.
In the Eye of the Beholder
It was a warm, sunny afternoon and I was at a garden party, eating, drinking, and slowly drifting from conversation to conversation. The kind of day where nothing feels particularly important in the moment.
At some point in the evening, a friend looked at me and said, completely casually: By the way, that colour really suits you. I remember pausing slightly. Not because it was unusual to receive a compliment, but because of what it was attached to.
I was wearing a sage green dress.
There’s a common idea that you should pay attention to what people compliment you in, because it can hint at your “best” colours. But I’ve started to question that. In my experience, people tend to notice you most when you’re wearing something visually strong—bright colours, high contrast.
Anything that stands out in a room tends to do the heavy lifting—regardless of whether it actually harmonises with the wearer’s features.
For example, I would always get compliments when wearing red, even though I now know it isn’t my “best colour”. It’s simply in your face.
How often does one get complimented wearing sage green though?
Attention isn’t the same as harmony
Red
Impossible to miss
Sage Green
Easy to miss
The loudest colour in the room isn’t always the one that’s actually yours.
It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t demand attention.
It’s soft and not particularly attention-grabbing.
Yet that day, on me, it was noticeable.
And that was the first time I started to wonder whether I might actually be muted.
Lady in Red
The second clue that I wasn’t bright was hiding in my makeup drawer.
Who doesn’t love the idea of a bold red lip?
It’s such a classic look—effortless, confident, timeless. The kind of thing that instantly makes an outfit feel more polished.
Except every time I tried it, the result was the complete opposite.
I would envision an outfit in my mind, get dressed up, do my hair, and then have the brilliant idea that a red lip would be the perfect finishing touch. Spoiler alert: it never was.
Every time, I would eventually wipe it off in disappointment. Not that a lipstick failing to work is a particularly tragic event, but I genuinely couldn’t understand why it never gave me that chic, polished look I saw in countless inspiration photos online.
Instead, my face looked tired, drained, and strangely grey. It was as if all my fine lines had suddenly become more pronounced. I could almost feel my jowls being physically dragged down.
Somehow, a single lipstick had managed to age me by at least ten years.
Eventually, I slowly accepted that a red lip just wasn’t in the cards for me.
Looking back, it a valuable piece of evidence.
The problem wasn’t that red lipstick was false advertised
—it was that this particular level of intensity was simply too much for my muted colouring.
Seeing Clearly
This suspicion became clearer with another piece in my wardrobe—a bright green jumper I had always loved (noticing a pattern here).
It had a keyhole cut-out and bell sleeves, and I would consistently get compliments whenever I wore it. The design itself was striking, so I always assumed it was simply a good outfit moment.
But by this point, I had a growing sense that I was leaning more on the softer, more muted side—and this jumper was about to confirm it.
As I was discovering more and more about my colouring, my feelings about this particular piece shifted. If I was cool and muted, the colour of it shouldn’t suit me. Every time I wore
it, I had a subtle feeling that something was slightly off.
The real tell-tell sign, this time, was my hair.
Against that bright green, the muted quality of my level 6 ash-brown hair suddenly stood out in a way it never had before. The contrast was too strong.
My face and my hair just vanished under a grey veil behind the bright green foreground. I looked almost like a ghost.
I realised I wasn’t wearing the outfit, it was just kind of sitting on me, visibly disconnected.
Bright Green
Bright + Cool
COLOUR NOTES
This one was sneaky. It got compliments every time.
It definitely made a good outfit, but it wasn’t harmonising, it was overpowering. Next to something this bright, my muted ash-brown hair and skin just faded into a grey haze behind it.
Suddenly, it made sense why—I was muted.
And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.
