Monochromatic

Want the easiest choice? You can choose just one color!

Find the color that you love to wear and then coordinate everyone’s outfits around it. Or choose the color that everyone actually has in their closet.

Using one color makes things simple and keeps the focus on your lovely faces.

Using one color means that you can use lighter and darker shades or that color. You can also use a print of that color.

To see what different shades of your color look like try this color wheel app.

I’m also gathering lots of inspiration from many amazing photographers.

Blue Inspiration on Pinterest

More Color Combinations Inspiration on Pinterest

Fall Inspiration on Pinterest

Analagous

This is the next easiest choice. It’s like monochromatic, but it adds another color or two.

Take a color you like such as blue, and find out what it’s next to on the the color wheel. Let’s take blue. On one side blue is next to other blues and greens. This is one option. It’s also next to purple and red. This is another option. So you’re choosing two or three colors that are nextdoor neighbors.

The family in the picture is wearing navy with violet and red as an analogous color scheme.

You can try out different analogous color combinations with this color wheel. You can slide the circle around to choose your main color. Then click the NEXT button to see different color combinations such as analogous.

Now, if you want to spice things up a bit you can play with complementary colors. In this option, you take a color you like on the color wheel and find out what its complement is. It’s the color directly across from it.

The family in the first picture is wearing navy. The complement for navy is a golden yellow. They also found a patterned shirt with both navy and golden yellow. They also make use of neutrals with a light cream color, navy, and denim pants.

The family in the second picture is wearing pink and its complement light green. The little girls’ light green shirt stands out to my eye because they only used a little pop of that complementary color.

When balancing your main color and its complement you have a choice. For a bolder look like the family in the first example use the colors in roughly equal amounts. For a calmer look with a pop of color, try the second example and use the bold color just a little bit.

Try out complementary color combinations with this color wheel. You can slide the circle around to choose your main color. Then click the NEXT button to see different color combinations such as complementary.

Are you ready for a challenge? It will give you more color options to choose from as a reward. It also gives you a vibrant, colorful feeling.

To create this color combination, you choose a color and then you also choose the two colors next to its complement on the color wheel.

Let’s take blue for example. It’s complement is orange. So you find the neighbors next to orange which are red and yellow. Your split complementary is blue-red-yellow.

The family in this example is wearing lots of blue with red and yellow too. They also include orange as well. I think it works well because red, yellow, and orange are all neighbors. And it gives a color feeling without feeling like the entire rainbow of colors which might distract the eye.

Another classic, timeless color scheme is choosing neutrals. A neutral color is one those that lacks color or has only a small amount.

Neutral colors include shades of brown, gray, white, light pinks, denim and black. For the most neutral, soft look avoid adding much black or navy.

Neutral colors are also freebies that you can use in any of your color schemes. You can go back and look at each of the examples and see all of the neutrals that the families added into their clothing. Using lots of neutrals is a great way to keep images feeling classic and timeless.

Your pants, shorts, shoes, sandals can be neutral colors. You can also choose shirts, sweaters, and accessories in neutrals too.

Here are some outfit examples on Pinterest to inspire you.

Tip #3 - Include Textures and Patterns

Adding textures is an ideal way to add more variety to your portraits. You can bring in different textures of knits, denims, cotton, linen, corduroy, velvet.

When it comes to patterns, you can choose a bold one for one person to wear if you’d like, but if you try to do this with more than one person it’s tricky and may clash or be too much. If you love patterns and want more than one person to wear them then keep them very subtle.

One risk of not varying textures and staying on the monochromatic or neutral side is that it can possibly start to feel a bit like wearing uniforms.

Tip #4 - Bolder Clothing Will Attract the Eye

If you choose certain clothing it’s not necessarily wrong or bad. I would never want anyone to avoid wearing something they love or that feels meaningful.

Certain colors, graphics, and other aspects of clothing just attract our eyes more.

White is a color that will attract our eyes. So clean, bright white will be a color the eye is drawn to. It’s not bad per se, just something to keep in mind.

Neon colors are bold and fun but they draw our eye in a lot because they are so bright.

Graphics with faces and words will be very distracting to the eye. They can also be fun to wear and meaningful.

Another thing to consider is that even a more tame color like blue could stand out. If everyone else is wearing a shade of gray and one person wears blue then naturally our eye goes to that pop of contrast.

So having said that, there are certain obvious ways to draw the eye away from seeing your family as a whole and their lovely faces like bold patterns, graphics, cartoon faces on t-shirts, lettering t-shirts and sweatshirts, wear white, or bright neon colors. Just consider that, and if you’re happy with that choice then I’m totally happy with it too!

Tip #5 - Dress Comfortably

I reccomend prioritizing comfort. You know your kids best and what they’ll be able to handle. Or what you want them to handle. But for many kids if they feel itchy and miserable then it tends to show up in their pictures. I’d try to make sure they feel good and can move around and play a bit even and things will keep feeling great and won’t fall apart.