If you’d told me a few years ago that spending £95 on a colour analysis would completely change the way I shop, I would have laughed. Politely, obviously, but I’d have laughed.

I always thought colour analysis was one of those things that was nice if you were a fashion blogger, or if you had the kind of wardrobe that needed curating rather than the kind that needed rescuing. I didn’t put myself in the first category and was trying very hard to leave the second. So it sat on my mental to-do list for years, somewhere between “book that dentist appointment” and “actually learn how to use the settings on my camera.”

And then I did it. And it was SO worthwhile!

What colour analysis actually is (in case you’re where I was)

Colour analysis is the process of working out which colours truly suit your specific skin tone, hair, and eyes, as opposed to the colours you’re drawn to, the colours that are currently everywhere in the shops, or the colours you’ve been defaulting to for twenty years out of habit. It organises colours into “seasons” based on undertone, depth, and clarity; think Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

Each with its own palette of shades that will make you look brighter, healthier, and more like yourself, and a corresponding set of colours that will quietly do the opposite.

The difference when you’re wearing your colours versus not wearing them is genuinely startling once you know what to look for. Your skin looks clearer. Your eyes look brighter. You look less tired. You look more like the best version of you.

And conversely, the wrong colours can make you look washed out, sallow, older, or just slightly… not quite right, in a way that’s hard to pinpoint until someone explains what’s happening.

Most women have experienced both without ever understanding why. They’ve bought things that looked glorious on the hanger and felt thoroughly disappointing on their body.

They’ve worn something and had people ask if they’re tired! They’ve had a colour that makes strangers compliment them without knowing why. Colour analysis explains all of it.

“I’d spent good money on a dress I genuinely wanted to love. Getting my colours done told me in thirty seconds why it never felt right. That alone was worth the £95..”

How I got mine done

I used Curate Your Style’s online Seasonal colour analysis (as a paying customer, I’m not working with them), and I’d recommend them without hesitation. The online format is fab because there’s no need to travel to London or book months in advance. You upload a series of photos of yourself, including some without makeup and without fake tan (which, if, like me, you’re naturally pasty AF in need of a holiday, feels very vulnerable but is apparently essential), answer a few questions, and within 72 hours you receive a detailed, personalised report.

Theirs is thorough in a way I wasn’t expecting…

Their Seasonal Colour Analysis Gold package, currently £95, covers your complete colour palette, the best metals for your colouring, leather colours, denim shades, nail colours, print guidance, and outfit combination ideas. It is literally your colour guide for life rather than just a list of paint swatches to apply to your next shopping trip.

You can find them at www.curateyourstyle.london.

What I found out (and why it all suddenly made sense)

I’m a Dark Autumn.

My palette is rich, warm, and deep: terracotta, claret, mystic maroon, jungle green, prussian blue, chocolate, camel, and aquamarine as a statement colour. My metals are bronze, copper, brass, and gold, which made me extremely happy because I’ve always been drawn to gold and had always wondered if it actually suited me or if I just liked it. Turns out both. My denim is charcoal grey, ink blue, or navy, and washed-out pale blue is off the list… although I do occasionally still wear these, it’s not quite so offensive given they are far enough away from my face and hair!

Once I had this information, something clicked into place that I hadn’t even known was missing.

There were clothes in my wardrobe that I had wanted to love. Things that were exactly the style I’d usually go for, that had looked lovely on the hanger, that I’d been excited to buy. But every time I put them on, something felt… off. Not wrong enough to be obvious. Just not quite right. I’d put them back on the rail and reach for something else without ever really knowing why.

Now I know.

One example that stands out particularly: a pale yellow dress I’d bought to wear to a friend’s wedding. Not a cheap dress. A considered purchase, a proper occasion dress, and because I’d spent money on it, I kept holding onto it long after I’d stopped wearing it. Every time I opened my wardrobe, I’d see it and skip straight past it without fully registering why.

The moment I got my colour analysis back, it was immediately obvious. Not that there was anything wrong with the dress. It just wasn’t my colour. Pale yellow is a Spring colour, soft and cool-leaning. I am a Dark Autumn. On someone with the right colouring, it would be gorgeous. On me, it was making me look like I needed a holiday and possibly some iron tablets!

That one realisation changed the way I shop completely.

The real value: buying intentionally

Here’s what changes when you know your colours. You stop buying things because you like them and start buying things because you know they’ll actually work for you. These sound like the same thing, and they are absolutely not the same thing.

Before I had my colours done, I was making purchasing decisions based on a combination of “I like this,” “a fashion blogger recommended it,” “it’s reduced,” and “I’ll probably wear it.”

After having my colours done, those decisions are filtered through one additional question: is this actually going to work on me, specifically, with my colouring? And that one question has eliminated a significant proportion of the things I would otherwise have bought and eventually never worn.

This is where the money saving happens, and it is not a small saving over time…

The fashion industry runs on the fact that most women spend their entire lives buying things that look good on a hanger or on a model with completely different colouring, taking them home, feeling faintly disappointed, and going back to buy something else in the hope that the next one will be the one that works.

Colour analysis interrupts that cycle, because you stop looking at clothes and thinking “that’s pretty” and start looking at them thinking “that’s not my undertone” or “that’s my colour, let me see if the cut works.”

And then there are the fabrics

While I’m here, because this is all connected: alongside becoming more intentional about colour, I’ve also become considerably more intentional about fabric.

Natural fibres, linen, cotton, wool, silk, cashmere, where possible, tend to feel better to wear, age far more beautifully, and encourage you to buy pieces you’ll actually keep for years rather than for a season. Synthetic fabrics hold odour, pill after washing, contribute to microplastic pollution, and look cheap faster than you’d like, given what you usually spend on them. Polyester is plastic, and once you start noticing it, you cannot stop noticing it.

None of this means you need a Loro Piana budget. Natural fibres exist on the high street, in Zara, Mango and Arket, if you know what to look for. The point is just to buy fewer things, of better quality, in the right colours for you. That combination is genuinely the formula for a wardrobe that works almost on autopilot.

Cheap clothes are a false economy. Cost per wear is real.

This is why I love the idea of a capsule wardrobe

A capsule wardrobe isn’t about owning as little as possible or performing some sort of minimalist aesthetic for the internet. It’s about owning the right things. Fewer pieces, all of which earn their place. Everything that goes together. A wardrobe where you can open the doors in the morning and actually see your options rather than wade through a rail of things you bought with vague intentions and specific regrets.

When you know your best colours, understand your personal style, and become more intentional about what you bring in, everything starts working together in a way that feels almost miraculous if you’ve spent years in wardrobe chaos!

Shopping becomes easier because you have actual criteria rather than vibes. Getting dressed becomes quicker because almost everything goes together. You stop wasting money on clothes that don’t earn their place, because you’ve stopped buying them in the first place.

This is the wardrobe that is available to every woman who decides she wants it.

It doesn’t require a huge budget or a complete overhaul overnight. It requires knowing yourself well enough to shop for yourself rather than for an imaginary version of you who has slightly different colouring and a completely different lifestyle.

What to do if you’re ready to take this further

If colour analysis is something you’ve been considering, I cannot recommend it enough. Go and look at Curate Your Style, their online service is thorough, the turnaround is fast, and the Gold package at £95 genuinely pays for itself in avoided purchases within the year. Book it, do the photos properly without a filter and prepare for things to click into place.

And then, once you know your colours and you’re ready to actually build the wardrobe that works, that’s exactly where the Wardrobe Glow-Up Guide comes in.

The guide walks you through the complete wardrobe reset: decluttering properly (which is considerably more involved than a quick clear-out), organising everything back in using systems that actually hold, building a capsule wardrobe once you can see what you’ve got, shopping intentionally going forward, and making confident decisions about what belongs in your wardrobe and what doesn’t. Including, critically, the stuff that isn’t just about the clothes. The guilt pieces. The sentimental items. The things you’re keeping for a version of yourself you’re not sure you’re still becoming.

Because the goal of all of this, the colour analysis, the capsule wardrobe, the intentional shopping, the proper declutter, isn’t to have a nicer wardrobe. It’s to create a wardrobe that reflects the woman you actually are right now, and makes getting dressed feel like something you do rather than something that happens to you every morning while you’re still half asleep and vaguely annoyed.

Right now, the Wardrobe Glow-Up Guide is £22 instead of £33. For a wardrobe that stops costing you money, time, and the specific low-grade misery of opening a full rail and finding nothing to wear. I’d say that’s a reasonable exchange.

Add the code: GLOWUP11 at checkout

One last thing…

If any of this has made you look at your wardrobe differently, or at the way you’ve been shopping, I talk about the identity work behind all of it, the reasons we hold onto the wrong things, the reasons we keep buying what doesn’t serve us, and what genuinely changes when the environment shifts, in depth on the How to Break Up With Your Stuff podcast.

And if you want the bigger picture, the whole life reset rather than just the wardrobe, that’s what Break Up With Your Stuff is built for. Join the interest list here, and I’ll let you know when the next round opens.