I went to Korea for a Color Analysis

...well not technically. I just wanted to make fun of how most influencers label their videos. So, since I was already going to South Korea, I wanted to get a color analysis there. I have a few reasons. First, it is less expensive. Second, the services provided are more comprehensive (they include makeup, hair colors, hairstyle, and necklines). Third, while it's getting better, I have heard that individuals of color tend to get type caste as either a Winter or Fall due to their hair and eye color. Considering the common hair and eye color in Korea, most color analysis systems don't factor in hair and eye color. Overall, I thought it was a good experiment, and I'll tell you about my experience for those who don't have access to a Korean color analysis.

Finding an Analyst

I don't have a TikTok account, and I value my time in not going through hundreds of YouTube videos to find a color analyst in Busan (especially since a lot of people go to Seoul). Instead, I went to Reddit. On Reddit, I found a thread from a few years back about someone who found a color analyst in Busan who spoke English. I reached out to her on WhatsApp, but unfortunately, she moved, and I would not be able to see her. Luckily, she recommended to the color analyst I booked with, Melrose. If you are interested in booking with her, you can DM her on Instagram, @melrose_color. Through Instagram, I could book an appointment and pick a course; she has two.

Standard Course: 75,000 won/person, 40 minutes

color analysis
jewelry recommendation
hair recommendation

Premium Course: 120,000 won/person, 1.5 hours

Standard Course +
face line and features analysis
hair style recommendation
neckline recommendation

The Appointment

Before the appointment, she gave me a short questionnaire:

Name/Age/Gender
Favorite colors: red and black
Colors you prefer to avoid: I typically avoid yellows, white, and pastels but am open to it if it's in my palette
Your usual fashion style (select all that apply):

Casual - check
Active
Feminine & Romantic - I sometimes try to wear more feminine, but I don't think it flatters me all the time
Elegance
Minimal - check
Ethnic - sometimes
Modern - check
Mannish - check

Preferred lip color: red
Preferred hair length or hairstyle: long; I also have partially colored hair that I like to change the color of every few months
How much do you know about personal color?

I've heard of warm and cool tones.
I know about the personal color type for all four seasons. - but I mostly know about winter and fall
I don't know much about personal color.

Do you have any concerns about your skin tone? (select all that apply)

Redness
Pores
Blemishes
Dullness
Pimples - I have eczema and occasional pimples around my period

My note to Melrose: I don't typically wear face makeup (only lip, eyeliner, and nail polish) because I don't really know how to use it

At the beginning of the appointment, she had a short presentation to teach a little about the color analysis system she uses. After we started with the drapes. The first step was finding out if I was cool or warm-toned. After she tested whether my face could "take" light and dark colors. Then, we looked at saturation. These become the four dimensions (note it's not exactly a one-to-one with the classic three dimensions of color) on which everything else is focused. The next step was to go through the color drapes. She didn't have drapes for the metallic colors, but she did have them for necklines and patterns. She had gold, rose gold, and silver jewelry for the recommendation. She used those dyed hair strands for the hair color suggestion, so it was mostly based on natural hair colors (unlike my hair). Finally, we did the makeup recommendations. Finally, she summarized everything while writing it down on this summary sheet. She also had some palette cards where she circled my best colors. I will scan these papers to include in my result breakdown below. Additionally, Melrose sent me a more comprehensive digital summary of my email after about a day. She was also very receptive to answering any additional questions I came up with the next day on Instagram. Overall, I was very satisfied with my analyst and would highly recommend her services if you are curious and in Busan.

The Results

My Main Color Dimensions

As I mentioned, this color analysis system uses four major dimensions compared to the three dimensions of color. First, let's discuss the dimensions of color:

Hue: Hue is how bright a color is. If you are familiar with photo editing, you will find that this is also called saturation. This scale goes from grayscale (achromatic) to vivid colors. The most vivid color is called a 'pure hue.'
Value: Value is how light or dark a color is. If you were to turn the saturation down, the value would be where a resultant gray falls between pure white and pure black.
Chroma: Chroma is how muted a color is. This is where it gets confusing. If you are a painter, you would be familiar with tint, shade, and tone. We talked about a pure hue already. A tint is when you add white to a pure hue (think of lavender as white with a tint of purple). A shade adds black to a pure hue. A tone is made by adding gray to a pure hue, which mutes the color. Since gray is made of white and black, sometimes it is very hard to tell if a color is muted at an extreme value since it could only seem to be mixed with white or black. The extremes of the chroma dimension are clear and gray.

The color dimensions used by the Practical Color Coordinate System (PCCS) are a little bit different than what is listed above. This is especially true because where you land on the dimension is not necessarily due to your own coloring, but it is what you 'can take.' I'll explain it better in a second. Here are the four dimensions:

Temperature: This is the only dimension that is very different from the others and doesn't reflect the three dimensions of color. Though I guess that is what makes it different, so we love that circular reasoning. Temperature is based on your skin tone. This is where the cool and warm-toned tests come into play. It is also typically the first step of basically every color template. So, if everything seems too complicated, just try to learn this part. For skin tones, a yellow base is considered a warm tone, while a blue base is a cool tone. This is why the blood veins on your wrist test work. However, what makes this complicated is tanning. Apparently, I am pretty neutral, but I lean cool. So when I don't have a heavy tan (natural from that Arizona sun), my veins look blue, but when I am tan, they look green. This is due to my overtone changing. However, my undertone does not, which is what leans cool. As I mentioned, I struggled to identify this in myself, but during my analysis, Melrose gave me some tips. First, I'm sorry, but most people have gripes about their appearance. So when it comes to your face, if you have a tendency to have yellow bags under your eyes, then you are probably warm-toned. However, if you are like me and tend to have red areas under your eyes and on your cheeks (mine are from my eczema, but I digress), then you are likely cool-toned. Last note, remember how I said your dimensions are not necessarily based on your coloring? Well, this one is; the others aren't.
Lightness: This is basically the same as value. However, unlike color dimensions, we aren't looking at a single color; we are looking at what range of colors look good on you. This is when people are heartbroken and told they can't wear black. During my analysis, Melrose did a bunch of grayscale drapes for this. She started with a bright white, which is basically the only thing I can't wear. Bright whites have a tendency to wash me out, but off-whites actually brighten up my complexion. Apparently, I have a pretty reflective face, so off-white was the best for me since grays and blacks don't have that brightening effect. Whereas a bright white over-brightens my face. Surprisingly, even for Melrose (I guess you don't know until you see the drapes), I was still able to 'take' black. In fact, black actually was very good for me. It just doesn't give me that brightening effect, so her suggestion was to wear white as my base shirt and then black or other darker colors as the jacket. Gray itself was alright, but we'll talk about it more soon.
Saturation: This will correlate with hue. Achromatic refers to grayscale colors (i.e., lack of color, not muted colors). Vivid is the other end. As you will see later, to be fully vivid means that the color is a pure hue and, as a result, will always be a medium value based on the PCCS. My best colors were medium saturation, so right in the middle. As we learned from the lightness test, my face reflects colors really well. So, just the same as the bright white, vivid colors reflected harshly off my face. This gives my face a slight tint of whatever color I am wearing, which is not ideal. Alternatively, fully achromatic colors were okay for me. This is probably because white and black worked on me, and grays were right. However, there is a fine line between the colors of the lower hues. Pale colors are not good for me. They wash me out in a similar manner to bright white, but light colors look nice. They are light enough to reflect light on my face, but they are not so vivid that it casts a colored light on my face.
I couldn't find the English translation for this dimension, so we are going to call it "Tone": Tone reflects chroma. Now, let's get into some details about gray. As I mentioned, off-white is best for me, as are medium saturation colors. However, dark colors also look nice on me (they don't add brightness, but they don't detract). Achromatic grays (I say this because some people call very muted colors types of grays) looked okay on me. I think the best way to say this is that they are clear grays (not that you can really have a muted gray, but hopefully, it'll make sense in a second). So basically, if you had to rank everything we've learned so far. First, light colors and off-white look best on me. Second, dark colors also look good on me, but they should be used as a jacket (to the side of my face) with an off-white shirt in the middle (so it reflects lightness on my face). Pure grays basically fall here. Light grays can substitute for an off-white shirt if necessary, but darker grays should be used as jacket layers rather than underneath my face. Now we'll talk about tone. Muted colors looked really bad on me. Any amount of gray added to a color enhanced "gray shadows around my mouth and eyes." So, with this in mind, clear colors are best for me. Grayscale doesn't really have clear or muted colors, but if you had to assign labels, white and black would be clear colors. So, all in all, it makes sense for me that they are better than gray. Additionally, a pure (cool) gray is more clear than a very muted brown or any other color.

My Color Palettes

So, the PCCS colors aren't exactly a matrix of the dimensions we just discovered, but they are all related. Now that I know this system exists, I'll make a more specific post on this color system, but for now, I'll just give you a quick rundown of the system's organization. First things first. This system has 12 color palettes that take into account the three dimensions of color. These 12 palettes come in a cool and warm version (so there are a total of 24 palettes). I am cool-toned, so that eliminates all of the warm color palettes. These are the 12 palettes:

Pale: Pale colors are colors mixed heavily with white. They are very light with low saturation. This would be the palette filled with pastels, which is the lightest palette. While pale colors are light, they are too low in saturation to look good on me.
Light Grayish: Light grayish colors are colors mixed with light gray. They are light, low saturation, and medium-grayish. Basically, they are pale colors mixed with a little black, which makes them darker and muted. So, this palette is not good for me either.
Grayish: Grayish colors are colors mixed with gray. They are medium-lightness, low saturation, and grayish. If you haven't seen the pattern, these colors are darker and more muted. This is actually possibly my worst palette (or I guess the warm version is).
Dark Grayish: Dark grayish colors are colors mixed with dark gray. They are dark, low saturation, and medium-grayish. Since the mixed gray is now closer to black the colors are actually more clear as well as darker. So, even though this palette isn't suitable for me, it isn't as bad as the last palette.
Dark: Dark colors are colors mixed with black. They are dark, medium-saturation, and clear. To get to this palette from the one before, you basically take out the white that was mixed in. This makes the colors more saturated and clear. This palette is actually really nice on me. As I mentioned before, it meets all of my criteria. The only palette that is better would be a lighter palette, just because it brightens my face (but that doesn't mean this one darkens my face or else I couldn't wear black). So basically, I can wear this palette, but for my absolute best look, I would wear them as jackets and wear off-white in the middle.
Dull: Dull colors are also colors mixed with gray. They are medium-lightness, medium-saturation, and medium-grayish. This is a lighter version of dark, but that also means introducing white again (i.e., gray). However, this palette is different than the gray palette as it is more saturated. However, as a muted palette, it does not suit me.
Soft: Soft colors are colors mixed with light gray. They are light, medium-saturation, and medium-grayish. They are a more saturated version of the light grayish palette. This palette is very reminiscent of the soft summer palette that most would know from the 12-season color system.
Light: Light colors are colors mixed with white. However, there are fewer white than pale colors, so they are light, medium-saturated, and clear. This is my best color palette. It fits all of the criteria we discussed earlier and has no limitations/preferences (like being a jacket instead of a shirt).
Bright: Bright colors are colors mixed lightly with white. They are somewhat light, saturated, and clear. Since they are saturated, they can't really be that light. These colors are too saturated and will reflect colors off of my face, so it is not ideal.
Strong: Strong colors are slightly less saturated pure hues. As I said before, these colors are too bright/vivid for me.
Deep: Deep colors are colors mixed lightly with black. They are darker, saturated, and clear. Since the darker colors are not as reflective on my face as lighter colors, I can actually wear this palette, unlike the bright palette. However, I am supposed to use this palette in a similar way to the dark palette (as a jacket). So, generally, if I want a more saturated color, I'll need to look to this palette. Something else that's interesting. Since this palette is more saturated than my other two palettes (light and dark), the temperature of each color is more intense. So, Melrose told me I should actually look towards the warm deep palette for naturally cooler colors and use the cool deep palette for naturally warmer colors. This means I should use cooler reds and greens but warmer blues and purples.
Vivid: Vivid colors are true hues and not my palette.

In conclusion, my color palettes are light summer, dark winter, and deep winter. I should also use blues and purples from the deep autumn palette instead of those from the deep winter palette. So there's still a lot more information, but unfortunately, this blog post is so long that my computer started lagging. With that, I'll sign off for now and pick it up later.

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