Five ways to make ONLINE COLOUR ANALYSIS work for your business

Today I want to talk to you about my love of colour analysis and online colour analysis in particular. I’m going to start by saying how grateful I am to have discovered them both, as they’ve changed the course of my life.

I started out my career in manufacturing, but I was hooked on colour from the day I saw my first colour demonstration. After seeing that demo, I became a personal stylist, and colour analysis very quickly became my favourite service to offer clients.

I learned colour analysis through a 'study at home' program by Bernice Kentner of Color Me a Season in the US. She was a brilliant colour consultant, one of the pioneers. As with everything, when you’re new to it, you spend a lot of time doubting yourself and whether you’ve got it right. What was great about Bernice’s program was that I did my first colour analyses for family and friends, and I could send off the results to Bernice, who would correct them and send them back to me.

At that time, social media wasn’t really a thing, so I didn’t have the constant pressure like colour consultants have now where it’s so easy to compare your work unfavourably against what others are doing. There was only one other consultant and me that I knew of in the whole of Singapore back then. In contrast, now there are thousands of colour consultants in every corner of the world, and all have different opinions about how best to conduct colour analysis. Having that second opinion made a huge difference to my confidence!

Once I became more experienced at colour coding my clients, I moved into training other stylists to do the same. While I’m really grateful for that early experience and the wonderful clients who trusted me to help them back then, business was HARD! I put so much effort into it every day but struggled to make consistent money. As with many stylists today, I wasn’t making much more than pocket money.

Once my sons came along, I decided to go back to an employed role and worked for my husband as the HR Director of his company. I couldn’t afford to spend so much time on my business for such little financial return anymore.

By 2018, we’d moved from Singapore to a small village in the South of France, and while I looked for work locally, my lack of skill in the French language made it impossible to find a job. So, I restarted my personal styling business, but it was the same old story, so much time and effort for so little financial return.?

That's until I discovered online colour analysis!?

At first, like many of you, I was sceptical about whether it would work. I’d been trained in the traditional method, so I did a LOT of homework to learn more about whether it could work for my clients and me. I wasn’t aware of any of the big colour houses offering online colour analysis training at that time, but many consultants around me were singing its praises.

I’m not here to convince you that online colour analysis works, I’m just talking about my experience, and all I know is that it changed my life. I was never going to find many clients locally as we live in a small village, and as my boys were little, I didn’t have the time or inclination to go to loads of networking events. Online colour analysis fitted perfectly into the rest of my life and allowed me to work with clients worldwide without ever having to leave the house. I could be there whenever the boys needed me.

I now have 56 stylists who’ve taken my?5 Weeks to Online Colour Expert program . All are still a part of the exclusive Facebook group, where we code clients together almost every day. The easiest way to get confident in providing the service online is to get loads of practice. Therefore, having access to a group where we can all look at and give our opinions on each other’s clients is one of the most valuable elements of the program for me.

So now you know a little about my journey into online colour analysis and the training program I offer, I’m going to move on and share with you my advice for getting started providing your own online service.

Five ways to make online colour analysis work for your business

1)?The only people you should listen to are your clients

There is so much noise online, and we hear so many opinions from other image consultants and stylists. Some of the bigger colour houses offer online colour analysis training, and others don’t. There are very differing opinions about the effectiveness of online colour analysis, and some are voiced very loudly! I don’t care about any of that. I listened to no one else but my clients.

If your clients are happy and feel confident and empowered after an online analysis, then you’ve got your answer. Online colour analysis works!

As I said before, I was just as doubtful about online colour analysis as you might be now, but my clients soon made me a raving fan because they provided such fantastic feedback. They loved their experience and said it made a massive difference to their lives.

Also, don’t forget that your clients aren’t clueless when it comes to the colours that suit them. They’ve been dressing themselves their whole lives before you see them, so they’ll have a reasonably decent idea of what does and doesn’t work for them already. They’re just a bit confused, perhaps. So, when I said listen to your clients, I mean it! Listen to them closely to understand what they specifically need help with, and you can’t go far wrong with your analysis, whether in-person or online.

2) Colour analysis is not a science; it's an art

There is no single method to determine your clients’ colours. Various systems help you drill down and determine whether a person is warm or cool, soft or muted, bright or deep, etc.?Similarly, no single method will guarantee you get every client’s colours technically ‘right’.?We, humans, are complex characters in terms of our personality and physicality. No one fits precisely into a neat category to which you can apply a label.

Who says what’s wrong and right anyway?! It isn’t about getting it technically correct. It’s about helping your client feel better at the end of the day. I’m not saying that you’d give them any old colours, of course not. You would do your absolute best for them. But again, listen to what your clients want.

What are their requirements for their wardrobe?

What are their goals?

How do they want to project themselves?

I’m a summer, but often, the summer palette doesn’t provide the level of contrast that I want for my work outfits. As I run my own business, I want to make more of an impact, so I choose colours from the winter palette.

If you listen to what your clients really want by asking them questions about their lifestyle and work, you will not provide the ‘wrong’ colour analysis.

It is not about being right or getting it perfect but finding the solution that helps your clients create the impression they want to make on the world and giving them more confidence.

3) Natural light is best

Natural light is 100% the best whether doing a colour analysis in-person or online. I don’t propose that you colour code your clients via Zoom video calls for online colour analyses, but from photos, they take of themselves in natural light. The quality of the pictures is paramount, and you must not compromise. Professional photos taken under studio lighting or using filters will not work.

Understandably clients might be reluctant to send you untouched photos, so it’s your job to gently explain precisely what you need and how their results will be so much more accurate if they send you natural, unedited photos.

4) Forget about skin tone

Now I know this one will be controversial, especially if you’ve been traditionally trained like I was. You’ll have had it drilled into you that to diagnose a client’s colours correctly, you need to determine whether the skin tone is warm or cool. While with some clients, it’s obvious to tell, with others, it can be tricky.

If you’re just starting and are confused about skin tone, forget about it.?Take a much broader look at your clients. Consider what their eye colour, hair colour and the blood vessels around the eye tell you, for instance. It isn’t just about skin tone.

Remember also that you must drape your clients, whether in-person or using digital drapes.?There is no shortcut to colour coding, so don’t skip the draping process.

5) Break all the rules

As I said before, my summer colours (the colours that suit me) don’t allow me to make the impact I want in my work, so I break the rules a lot of the time and choose colours from the winter palette. Your clients will likely have items in their wardrobe which are the ‘wrong’ colour for them once you’ve coded them. However, that doesn’t mean they should never wear them again! Instead, show them how they can wear them differently by using scarves in complementary colours, layering a better colour over the top, or even just wearing the right makeup. Show them clever tricks to help them adjust the not-so-great colours they want to continue wearing.

The matchy-matchy era of the 80s is over for most people, and they want to look modern, on-trend and wear fashionable colours.?Our role as personal stylists and colour consultants is to help our clients achieve what they want.?If they want to wear black, show them how to wear black. If they want to wear white, show them how to wear white! Show your clients how to use colour to balance their body shapes and show them how to make a massive impact if that’s what they want.

Essentially, you do whatever you need to do to send your clients away happy. It’s not about being right; it’s about using colour analysis as a tool to help your clients achieve their goals.

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