Personal appearance

Careful, evidence-led colour guidance for personal appearance — explaining ranges and influences rather than fixed rules or diagnoses.

Personal appearance is genetically complex, varies across populations, and is affected by lighting and photography as much as by biology. Colourwise explains rather than diagnoses, and never uses appearance to infer ancestry or identity.

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Eye colours

18 structured records, science, prevalence, comparisons, heterochromia and styling guidance.

Hair colours

9 categories with real-world variation, lighting effects and styling ideas — never a claim about age or ethnicity.

Skin undertone

5 categories, including “uncertain” as a valid outcome — why informal vein and jewellery tests aren’t reliable.

Contrast level

4 levels describing how hair, eyes and skin relate in depth — never a ranking, and genuinely variable within any group.

Jewellery metals

7 metal tones compared against skin and clothing — no metal is objectively best for anyone.

Eyewear colours

6 frame and lens-tint categories — styling only, never optical or prescription advice.

How these connect

Hair colour, undertone, contrast, eye colour, jewellery and eyewear all interact with clothing choices — each area’s own page links through to relevant Fashion guidance rather than repeating it, and outfit palettes built in Fashion can be filtered by these same appearance features.

Personal appearance guidance here describes ranges and influences — it never diagnoses a medical condition, predicts a child’s features, or infers ancestry or identity from appearance. See methodology.

Makeup, photographs and how you are seen

Makeup, grooming and nails, clothing near the face, how hair greys, and appearance in photographs and on stage.

Makeup and grooming

Lip, eye, cheek, nails and facial hair.

Why does the same lipstick colour look different in the tube, on the lips and in photos?Because what you see is pigment filtered through a finish, laid over lips whose own colour shows through, next to surrounding ski…How does eyeshadow or eyeliner colour change how eye colour looks?Mostly through contrast.Why does blush look different on the skin than in the pan?Because skin is translucent and already coloured by blood and melanin, and blush sits on it as a thin, partly transparent layer.Why does nail polish look different in the bottle, after one coat and after two?Because nail polish is a thin, partly transparent coloured film over a translucent nail with a pink nail bed beneath.Why can beard colour differ from head hair, and why does it grey unevenly?Every hair's colour is set by the pigment its own follicle makes — dark eumelanin, reddish pheomelanin, or less of both — so hair…Why does foundation that matched in the shop look wrong at home or in daylight?Usually because of metamerism: the foundation and skin reflect light differently across the spectrum, so they can match under one…

How you are seen

Clothing near the face, photographs, stage lighting and age-related changes in hair and vision.

Why do skin, hair and make-up look different in photos than in the mirror?Because a camera does not adapt the way eyes do.How does stage or event lighting change the colour of make-up, skin and clothes?Coloured stage and event light removes parts of the spectrum, so any colour that depends on the missing wavelengths darkens or sh…Does colour vision change with age, and does it affect choosing make-up and clothes?Yes, gradually.Why does my face look different depending on the colour I wear near it?Three things happen at once.Why does hair go grey, and what else about a face's colouring changes with age?Hair greys because follicles stop putting pigment into the fibre; there is no grey pigment, only pigmented hairs and unpigmented…

Personal colour