The Power Of Colour: How to Use Colour to Support Your Confidence, Visibility & Personal Brand

By Alex Standley.

We all have a personal brand, and colour is one of the simplest and most transformational tools you can use to communicate who you are, before you’ve even said a word.

And I want to acknowledge this right at the start: colour can feel like a minefield.

There’s so much information online. There are filters on TikTok that supposedly tell you what season you are; there are so many “rules” about what goes with what. So if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed or a bit afraid of colour, you are not alone. But the reason I love colour, and why I’m so passionate about it, is because it’s often underutilised. And when you start to use it intentionally, it can be genuinely transformational.

I’m going to share the simple ways I think about colour with my clients: what flatters you, what you love, and what you want to communicate. And I’ll give you practical steps you can try straight away.

Why Colour Is Such A Powerful Tool

Colour is a communicator. It can help you stand out, hold attention, look more awake, more confident, more grounded, and it can also help you feel those things too, which matters just as much.

If you’re on Zoom a lot, if you speak, if you present, if you’re building a profile, if you’re stepping into more visibility, colour can do so much heavy lifting for you. And it’s not about being loud for the sake of it, it’s about being intentional.

If I use myself as an example, I love wearing red when I’m on stage. I love the energy that it brings. It gives me confidence, it communicates strength and excitement. It’s a very powerful colour. But I also know red can be quite fiery, and it can feel overpowering in some situations. So there are also days where I will choose green, because I want to feel calm and grounded. And I want other people to feel the same around me. Even when I’m on camera on Zoom, that really matters.

So the point is: colour isn’t just aesthetic, it’s emotional, it’s psychological, and it’s a powerful tool for communication.

Personality Matters More Than A Generic Palette

You might have heard of seasonal colour analysis: spring, summer, autumn, winter that follows what’s happening in nature with the seasons. It’s a really helpful tool that I use with my clients. But the traditional way of using this colour system is to sit people in a box, the palettes are generic, and if someone hands you a seasonal palette and says, “this is what you should wear,” it can actually feel disempowering.

Because your personality matters, your likes and dislikes matter, your memories and sentimental attachments to colour matter. For example, you might hate a colour because it reminds you of your school blazer, or something your mum used to make you wear as a child!

Colour analysis is a really effective tool, but it has to be personal. I will always create my clients a bespoke palette, because it needs to be what you love and what’s going to make you feel empowered. It needs to make you feel good from the inside out, not just what looks good on paper.

And I want you to remember this: if you don’t feel good in it, don’t wear it. The goal is not to fit yourself neatly into a seasonal palette; the goal is to feel like the truest and best version of yourself.

Warm Vs Cool: A Simple Way To Test Your Undertone

If you don’t know whether you’re a warm, cool or neutral skin undertone (it seems to be the million-dollar question I’m asked the most!), one of the easiest ways to start is testing with neutrals. I call this the white t-shirt test. Hold a pure, bright white t-shirt up to your face. And watch how the colour reflects against your skin, pay particular attention to your eyes and whether it drains you or lifts your complexion. 

Then hold a warmer off-white or ivory and repeat the same process. If a colour drains you, it will often highlight darker circles, lines, and make you look a bit tired. If a colour lifts you, your skin looks clearer, brighter, more even, and it creates a harmonious effect.

If the bright white works best, you likely have a cool undertone to your skin, and if the off-white or ivory works best, you more than likely have a warm undertone to your skin. We also have what’s known as a neutral undertone, which means you sit somewhere in the middle, and you can wear both warm and cool undertones, but not the extremes of those palettes. 

If you’re neutral, it can help to “pick a lane”, not because you have to, but because it can make getting dressed easier, through pairing warm tones with warm and cool with cool. This can often be the missing piece when you feel like an outfit is ‘off’, but you don’t know why!

I have a neutral, verging on warm skin undertone, and I choose to go warmer. With warmer makeup and warmth through my hair colour, because that’s my personal preference, and I believe it’s more flattering for me.

Start With Your “Wow Colours” (The Easy Way To Build A Personal Brand)

One of the simplest things I encourage my clients to do is to have three to four “wow colours” that run throughout their wardrobe.

These are the colours you’re remembered for, the colours people associate with you and the colours that make you feel lit up and confident. And we choose them really intentionally based on three things:

1. Colours that work for you: what’s flattering to your skin tone, your hair colour, your eye colour.
2. Colours you love - the colours that light you up from the inside out.
3. What you want to communicate in your personal brand - the meaning behind those colours.

When you combine those three, that’s where the magic happens.

If I use myself as an example, my wow colours are pink, red and green, and I’m known for those colours. And it’s amazing how powerful this becomes in real life: when I go to events, people will come up to talk to me because they recognise me through the colours I’m wearing.

That’s what we’re aiming for, clarity and consistency, so you become instantly recognisable, in a way that still feels like you.

“Do I Have To Wear My Brand Colours All The Time?”

This is one of the most common questions I get. And the answer is: no, you don’t have to wear your brand colours all the time. Your brand colours may not be those you’d choose to wear in your outfits. But you can still build a strong presence with your wow colours that you come back to again and again, that is incredibly powerful even if they are different to your branding.

If you do want to include your exact brand colours on certain days, you can still keep the signature through accessories, jewellery, shoes, bags, glasses, in subtle ways that still feel cohesive.

Another common misconception is that because you’re wearing bright colours, it means you’re not professional. Professional is how you show up, it’s how you speak, it’s your presence. Neutral doesn’t equal more professional; it often does the opposite and makes you blend into the background if not worn in the right way! 

If your personal brand is already associated with bright colours, for example, red, pink, bold shades, you can absolutely stick with that in professional environments. Bold colour can be even more powerful on camera, because you want to stand out and to hold people’s attention.

What Comes First: What Suits Me, Or Colour Psychology?

If you want to prioritise one thing, prioritise what suits you and what feels good. Because there is no point wearing a colour that drains you, that doesn’t flatter you, and that makes you feel uncomfortable, just because someone told you it means “happiness” or “confidence”.

If you don’t feel good in it, you won’t show up in that energy. So yes, colour psychology is fascinating, but it is secondary to what works for you and what you love.

“I Want To Wear Colour, But I Feel Too Visible”

This is so common. There is often a block around colour that isn’t really about colour, it’s about visibility, and it’s about not wanting to draw attention. It’s about that feeling of: “Who does she think she is?” or “Am I being too much?” And I think a lot of those feelings aren’t necessarily our own; a lot of them are societal conditioning. So many of us have grown up with messages like: be seen and not heard, don’t take up too much space, don’t be too loud. And those messages sit in the back of our mind, in our subconscious, but they absolutely affect how we feel about wearing colour.

So if you’re someone who wants to wear more colour but it feels like pushing out of your comfort zone, here’s the approach I recommend: Start slowly, don’t go from all black to a bright pink dress, if that’s going to make you feel too exposed. Because if you do that, you might feel so uncomfortable that you’ll decide, I’m never doing that again. Instead, build confidence gradually, start with accessories, maybe a handbag in that colour you love, a scarf, earrings, a belt or shoes.

Another option to try is colour in your underwear. No one else can see it, but you’re wearing it, and it changes how you feel. Red underwear is a great example; it can give you that fiery confidence and energy without needing to feel exposed by wearing it externally.

And then over time, as you feel good, you start bringing it into your clothing. This is a process, and it builds. I haven’t always been as colourful as I am now. I used to wear a lot of black when I was a fashion buyer, and people are always shocked by that, because bright colour is something I’m known for now, but it didn’t happen overnight.

The more you do it, the more it makes you feel amazing, and then confidence builds from there.

Here’s What I Want You To Take Away…

Use the white t-shirt test to try to discover if you’re warm or cool, as a simple guide.

Pick three to four wow colours. Choose them based on what flatters you, what you love, and what you want to communicate.

Build confidence slowly if colour feels like “too much”, use accessories as an easy entry point. 

I’d love to hear from you if you try any of the tips and tricks I’ve shared here. Do share your stories and photos with me. If you want to go deeper with this, colour is one of the first foundations I work through with clients because it changes everything: how you feel, how you’re seen, and how easy it becomes to get dressed. 

 Alex Standley is a Style and Identity Strategist, Speaker, and Sustainable Fashion Consultant with over 20 years experience in the fashion industry, including 15 years as a Fashion Buyer for global brands including Marks & Spencer and Amazon.

Alex helps trailblazing women use style as a strategic tool to align their identity, values, and visibility, so their presence reflects the authority and impact of who they’re becoming.

For Alex, style isn’t superficial; it’s a powerful lever for confidence, influence, and legacy. Because when your style is aligned with your purpose, the world takes notice.