HOw to choose your wardrobe's color palette

I am an adult.

I realized this as I was going through my wardrobe the other day, trying to find an adult outfit. I have a TON of t-shirts. I have some pieces that I've picked up over the years for interviews-blazers, slacks, a couple of office-appropriate dresses. I realized though that a lot of items in my dresser and my closet don't exactly mix well together-you ever have a shirt that really only looks right with a certain type of skirt? Or a dress that you love but don't get to wear very often?

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The capsule wardrobe trend has been everywhere for a couple of years now-you choose a color palette and then you choose around 30 pieces head to toe that you can mix and match in like a million different combinations. This seemed like the perfect option for me since I don't really care what I wear at work so long as I get there on time.

Picking out the clothes is pretty simple-you choose some basics in solid colors (jeans tees tanks) some bottoms (skirts, slacks, leggings) some essential staples (a nice blazer, statement dresses) some shoes and some accessories. This is all up to you.

The hard part is choosing the color palette. There's literally a bajillion colors in the world. How are you suppose to choose a few that will go with each other all the time?

I'm going to walk you through how I chose my color palette.

I knew before I started that some colors were out. Orange for example. I don't own ANYTHING orange. I don't like the color by itself and it's too close to my skin tone. I bought this really cute shirt once that was striped with orange, blue, yellow and pink-it looked like desert mountains. I loved it-until I tried it on. Ugh, I had no idea that it was possible for  me to look so washed out and pasty.

In the end, I wound up with 9 colors, shown above.

​All of these colors look good on me and most of them compliment one another really well, which is exactly how a color palette should work. When choosing your own, keep these three guidelines in mind:


1) Colors you love.
Green is my favorite color and though I don't own a whole lot of green clothing I had to make room for it because when I do find something gorgeous in green I definitely have to get it! I also love light turquoise/aqua and I have a few blouses and dresses in that color. White graphic tees are one of my favorite looks and i love white dresses.

2) Colors you already own a lot of.
Black isn't necessarily a color that I love but we all own a lot of it-it matches stuff, it's good for work and it can be easily dressed up. I also have a ton of gray and leopard print.

3) Colors you get complimented in.
I don't really pay too much attention to the color yellow but I get loads of compliments when I wear it so it must look good on me!

To round it off, I mixed in blush/mauve and nude/beige/tan-both of these colors look good on basically anyone and they're pretty neutral so they can mix with lots of different colors.

I love this color palette and I feel like it'll be so much easier picking out outfits now! Have you ever tried a capsule wardrobe? What colors would you pick?