The colours that really make your eyes pop are part of your signature colour range. These are the colours that really brighten you up and make you look your best.
If you wear a top that is similar to your eye colour it will help to brighten your eyes.
Then, if choose eyeshadows that are either complementary, split complementary or even triadic to your eye colour you’ll find that it also helps to brighten them.
colour schemes using the colour wheel
For the purposes of eye colour, think of orange as brown (either for eyeshadow colour or an eye colour) which is basically orange with lots of black in it.
And think of red as pink (a light red, basically), unless you’re really creative or dramatic.
Then choose a lipstick colour that is close to complentary or a triadic colour to your eye colour, I notice with my blue eyes is that when I wear red lipstick, my eyes look bluer.
Your eye enhancers are great to wear as swimwear too.
I always thought my eyes were green until I did the color analysis in "The Triumph of Individual Style" and discovered that my eyes are actually gray. I started adding shades of gray to my wardrobe and found my eyes suddenly glow, and so does my face. It was an amazing revelation. When people criticize gray as a clothing color, I just smile smugly to myself.
Hi Cindy Kay, I see you wrote this over a year ago now, so I hope you’re still contactable!!! I’m just wondering where you found the colour analysis “The triumph of individual style”? Is that a post by Imogen or is it something else? I’d be interested to know, and to try it myself. My eyes are hazel, green, brown, sometimes grey, who knows, they’re a real mixture!!! Thanks very much, Sophie
Sophie Triumph is a book by Carla Mathis you can get it off Amazon
Sounds like you have soft warm coloring
Thanks Imogen, sorry for the delay with my reply! Interesting that you would suggest I am soft warm, my eyes are maybe a lot cooler than what I made them sound, I had my colours done in the 90’s and was classified a cool winter. But now I’m in my very early 40’s, I feel like my colour is fading. I had very very dark hair like yours, but it has been greying at a rapid rate. I have to have it coloured every four weeks now! I would so love to come down to Melbourne and have a consultation. Perhaps next year, when both of my kids will be in childcare!!!! Kind regards, Sophie
Well, I have brown eyes, but oranges and yellows make me look sick… I guess I can use blue eye makeup, but I won't be wearing orange tops — too bad :T
I think the idea is that if you have brown eyes, orange is a nice colour to complement your eyes (but that doesn't suit my dark winter color type, but great for a autumn type), like this:
Brown = Orange bluegreen
Brown = Orange blue and green
Brown = Orange Yellow-green and blue-violet
Oops, the arrows go amissing and the text inbetween. Try again without arrows
Brown = Orange is complementary to bluegreen
Brown = Orange is split complement to blue and green
Brown = Orange is triadic with Yellow-green and blueviolet
Heleen, I understand the chart, but the instruction is to wear a top in a similar color to your eyes AND a complementary eye shade. I can do the complementary eye shades, but not the top.
Hi Imogen, Great ideas, as always!!! I’m just wondering if you can please help me with a technical error? I clicked on the link to the “swimwear” article and it came up with this message: (Not Found, Error 404. This page no longer exists.)
I actually come across this quite a lot on your website. I’m just wondering if you know about this problem, or would it be something wrong at my end? (If so, my tecno savvy hubby can look at it for me!!). It’s just that I get so interested in all your posts that I want to read all the links too, and i keep getting this error.
Thanks very much, and looking forward to hearing your fabulous words of wisdom!!!
Sophie. It’s because when I moved my blog from blogger to WordPress some of the URL s changed so if you can’t find a post try searching for it using the search bar on the right hand column
Thanks so much Imogen! I’ve found your Search button, hiding down the bottom of the page! Now my danger is that I will be spending even more time on your fabulous site and ignoring the husband and kids. Woops!!!
I’ve actually tried to “dress up” my blue eyes, but never noticed that much of a difference. When I bleached my hair, however, (not completely, just many tiny highlights made my hair 2-3 shades lighter) and toned it with a silver schampoo, my eyes just exploded out of my face. As of a sudden it became my best feature…
Angelica – the right hair colour can make your eyes more prominent, as can a red lipstick or the most flattering clothing colours.
I was just playing around and draping myself with scarves, etc, and noticed that wearing a very light blue highlights my eyes — upon closer examination, the whites of my eyes have a blue tint (even though my skin, hair, eyes are all warm).
Also, I noticed that some shades of green really highlight my under-eye circles. Definitely need cover-up and/or smaller areas of green. Brighter/lighter shades didn’t have this effect, only the darker ones.
Used to wear those stone washed mustard cottons a lot and get multitudes off compliments … Not sure why they left the wardrobe but I can see clearly they need to come back to my brown eyes. Now I see why makeup artists always suggest me wearing hues of gold.
I always thought I had dark slate blue eyes until I looked into a 7 x magnifying mirror with a brightly lit window in front of me and discovered that I have no blue at all, but every shade of grey from silver to taupe and then when I step away they go back to looking dark blue – how strange.
I do wear quite a bit of grey that has a blue undertone but I don’t notice any change to my eyes. However, when I wear bright aqua greens or bright cornflower blues they do seem to become brighter as does my skin and hair colour. I was categorised many years ago as a ‘Summer’ and more recently as a tonal ‘Light’, although I do dip into the whole Summer palette mindful not to go too dark near my face.