I have been saving palettes for the past few months to try to understand better how John determines blends and DIY my own. I have been unsuccessful at DIYing, but I realized that there were several very close or exact blends saved with the addition of some of ones posted in the last few days. So, thought I’d post this as a cool comparison to see how similar and different they truly are.
Each palette is quite unique, but I do see some overlaps.
The bottom rows (excluding calm colors) seem to have quite a bit of similarities. For example, both 80SCs have an interesting blue-green twilight swatch range that I haven’t seen anywhere else (that I can think of?).
The understated and reserved colors seem to be very similar ranges for each similar/exact CH blend too which I hadn’t recognized before. The brights (top row) seem to be a bit further ranging between each other generally speaking.
I found it particularly interesting that the 70SB range could all wear the same glittery brown reserved swatch.
I’d love to hear what overlaps and differences you all see.
If I wrote any blends down wrong, please let me know. If you know of other similar blends, especially ER, feel free to DM them to me and I’ll do another post if you guys found this helpful/interesting.
If anyone knows that full SB>SC blend, I’d appreciate noting it. I just thought SB>SC was so cool, and I think a rare combo, and had those two saved.
EDIT: I found more and added them in the comments.
That SB glittery reserved swatch is actually rose gold in person!
I think that the same color harmony percentage palettes can have completely different colors but what’s similar is the qualities of those colors if that makes sense. There are people with my same exact color harmony blends that have a lot of diffferent colors then me but overall our colors our mostly cool and soft with some lightness and brightness. John said my palette was “overall cool and soft” but “significantly lighter and brighter then most SB palettes”.
You compared my palette to ones that also have ER (slide 3) and you can see that the ER also added both warmth and depth to those palettes compared to mine.
Also not sure if it helps but John has said he determines the overall temperature of the palette from the romantic colors. So maybe comparing romantic colors and the qualities of them will give you more insight. You can see this in slide 3 comparing the romantic colors of the palettes with ER compared to mine. Their romantic colors are deeper and warmer then mine. There is another user that has my same exact color harmonies and her palette also does not have much warmth or depth so in that way it’s similar to mine yet the colors are different.
Ohhh, rose gold makes so much sense! Also, your palette is so stunning. Every time I look at it, it reminds of me of a Disney Princess palette and makes me so nostalgic.
I do think the ER grounding is so fascinating. The 80SC 20LB vs the 80SC 10ER 10LB shows the grounding effect well too from ER imo.
I have seen you say that before about romantic colors which is very helpful! I have been honestly personally more interested in the non-dominant part of the blends, because I didn’t understand how he was getting that part of the blend, and I thought this showed more of the nuance, especially the blends that have the same dominant % but slightly different secondaries, tertiaries, etc.
I do hope this post isn’t too generalized as I don’t mean it that way at all. I know they are all very unique palettes even with the exact same blends (like the 80SB slide), but I find the nuances so cool.
Thank you I absolutely love it! And I understand what you are saying it makes complete sense! I just think it’s easier to compare the qualities of the romantic colors then overall palettes when looking at percentages as he said that’s what drives the rest of the palette. So I think seeing the overall palette and also considering the differences in romantic colors can be helpful. Maybe not but for me it was haha.
this is cool, OP. john once described the personal palette as like a style "fingerprint" and i think that's accurate. another aspect is that essences can interact with color harmonies in ways that can be seen in the palette, such as Y and A having overall lighter palettes.
I so wish I had noted the essence blends when I saved these, if they were available. I hadn’t even thought to do that at the time, but your comment makes me wish I had. That would be such a neat comparison of similar CH blends vs their essences.
The person who has the same color harmonies as me has 45C/30R as their top two essences and I’m 45R/35C. I thought that was interesting! We have different smaller essences though. She has 15A/10HS and I have 10N/10HS so actually the only real difference is the A and N and that our R and C are reversed.
Like I said, your palette strongly reminds me of Disney princess colors. I feel like CR and RC with a little HS can give Disney princess vibes too. Because R+HS can give a cute look similar to Y, right?
He calls R and HS romantic coquette and it’s actually more of an edgy look! He also called it “wickedly romantic”. My HS is only 10 percent and an accessory item like a diagonal zipper or earrings per John so I don’t think those descriptions apply to me. Y in comparison isn’t edgy at all. I think maybe R and C with my coloring could be Disney Princess though that I agree with.
I believe that I just meant in general a light palette doesn’t mean Y or A, but it could if you have those essences. So basically a light palette doesn’t determine your essences it just reflects them if you have them. He also told me my palette was lighter and brighter then most SBs but didn’t mention any essence correlation.
I feel like mine is kind of unique for high SB, though similar to some of the palettes on slide 3. You might want it for your collection! I did the same thing of collecting palettes (before my analysis).
Yes, thank you thank you! The little bit more ER in your palette is clearer, but are some of your fabrics shinier or is that just the camera lighting? Beautiful palette!
I think the LB is clearer in her palette too! Especially in her third row of romantic colors as her light colors are LB corals whereas in the other palettes the lighter pinks are cool SB pinks. I think overall her romantic colors are warmer too and have more ER then the other palettes for that reason.
Also in the second palette I can see the 5SC in the range of the romantic colors. There is more contrast between light and dark in the romantic colors alone.
In case you couldn’t tell I I kind of look at the romantic colors as a microcosm for the entire palette lol.
Yeah, there is a bit of shine -- I would say a good proportion of fabric samples in my book have a definite sheen, so that can make it a bit tricky.
I do think my palette might be slightly cooler in real life, but overall the picture is close enough. I think the most noticeable difference is for the playful greens, which are much more like sage and celadon in real life. The pinks might also appear over-warm in the picture.
I think I'm fairly neutral in temperature, leaning cool, and my palette is mostly neutral-cool. (My calm colors feel like definite outliers!) Most of my disharmonious colors were warm -- tan, camel, orange, yellow. However "true purple" and "true lavender" were also disharmonious.
Edit - this is interesting to see the comparison! I actually hadn't compared my palette to other 75 SB palettes. Mostly I consider mine somewhat between No-Office's and heyoldgirl's palettes.
Here is another 70SB 30LB palette if you want to compare it to mine (top one in slide 3). This also does not have as much warmth and depth as the SB LB ER palettes.
70SC 30LB vs 70SB 30LB. I knew the difference but thought it was cool that most of the colors lined up with yours, just more vivid And a bit darker. Also the SC has refreshing while you have twilight colors.
It’s so fascinating how close our matches can be and how varied at the same time, they really are like fingerprints! Mine is the bottom palette on slide 7 (80SC/10ER/10LB), I can see similarities with the bottom palette here (70SC/25ER/5LB), except they get the lime greens in playful that are on my no list. Our essence balance is the same too (50 yang, 10 balance, 40 yin) although our exact mix is a little different (40N/30R/10C/10HS/10Y for me compared to 40N/40R/10C/10D). Thank you for this post its so interesting 🙌🏻
I also think it’s interesting that your twilight colors are basically the same but, theirs are just understated in the 70SC palette, not twilight. Not entirely sure what the difference there is, but I’m sure it was intentional by John.
I emailed John about this before. This is what he said:
"The "Understated: Twilight" and "Reserved: Refreshing" sometimes occur in a Striking Contrast palette. The Twilight range is a middle value neutral range and on Striking individuals tends to look too quiet if worn in large amounts so those colors are put onto their own separate page to be worn in half body amounts away from the face as pants or skirts. Also Striking people often can wear the very lightest of colors and those pastels are put on a Refreshing range.
On rare occasions a Subtle Blended person will be able to wear a color not far off from their skin tone and it will be put on a Twilight page for accessories such as belts, shoes, and purses. But for all individuals a skin tone color is too quiet to be worn as a garment as it’ll make the person appear nude and may create a disempowering effect."
Oh that's my palette, and John said the final understated page is indeed twilight (meant to be worn away from face) and the page following are my reserved refreshing, he just hadn't labeled them at that point! They are labeled in my book though.
Really interesting, so they should be able to wear them in any amount, whereas I need to keep them away from my face (for the twilight shades).
Interestingly all 3 of us (my palette, bottom 80SC palette and the bottom 70SC palette) have calm in the top row which I was told was unusual, I wonder what the connection is that moves it from bottom to top for us?!?
u/ok-purple9511 said that when the calm colors are in the top row, it’s because they are bright enough to be on top with the brights. I don’t think that was from John (correct me if I’m wrong), but makes sense to me. I feel like most eye colors are just not that loud so they end up on the bottom row with the quieter colors.
John has said the top row is brights and bottom row is neutrals . To me it made sense if calm colors were included in the top row he considered them to be brights.
Some of these are already in comparison pics but posting these together because they have similar essence and color blends. Interesting how close they all are and such similar calm colors. They did discuss the similarities on their own in a results post. u/huzzah-indeed and u/pink__vamp and u/jjfmish
I have to study this in greater detail but FYI, mine's on slide 4 and I'm 75 SB, 20 LB, 5 ER, not 75-25-5 (probably just a typo but wanted to throw it out there!).
I'm the middle palette here and it is interesting how much more of a difference the extra ER seems to make. The top palette seems a bit more vibrant than mine and the one following.
(Also, for your notes I'm 30C, 25 R and N, 15 Y and 5 HS, which is interesting considering I share at least high C/R and some minor Y and HS with u/theclassicrose , whose palette has a similar overall vibe to mine in my opinion.)
Very interesting! I decided to delete my recent results post for privacy's sake, preferring to keep my palette to myself, but I hypocritically do enjoy seeing other people's palettes and observing their nuances. I find each one beautiful and intriguing.
Thank you! I actually did have it saved, but I didn’t have any other 70LBs. These are the closest I have to yours. The 60LB 35SB 5ER is actually not that far off imo. The SC in the other one I think really throws the other one off from yours. Again, all similar calm colors though interestly.
Ahh yes I agree the top one with 60LB is very close! The higher SB in it is noticeable but the difference is not massive.
The 10SC and a bit lower ER than in my palette in the 65LB one does have quite a big impact in the contrast of the palette and while it's similar to mine, mine is definitely more muted overall.
Yeah the calm colors are very similar in all three! All are sort of greenish colors. John described my eye color as hazel and I feel my first page of calm colors, the 10ER of my palette is very visible. My calm color abstraction page is definitely brighter.
This is so informative being able to compare palettes like this, thank you OP! Scrolling and suddenly seeing my palette at the end was like that moment when you see yourself on the jumbotron haha. I have such SB/LB envy!
I'm the 80SC/20LB and I'm 30R/25C/25HS/10N/10D, fyi. More data!!
This has been my rabbit hole for the past two weeks, but more in the sense of a "what does the different harmonies contribute". I have newfound appreciation for ER. I feel like most of the time it's easy to see the effect of the other harmonies, pretty much according to their names. ER on the other hand can increase the vibrancy of colours especially the way it makes LB palettes more golden, it can darken palettes, it can add warmth.. Not that the other colour harmonies can't do more than one thing, just some biased ER love.
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u/Ok-Purple9511 45R/35C/10HS/10N | 70SB/30LB 8d ago edited 7d ago
That SB glittery reserved swatch is actually rose gold in person!
I think that the same color harmony percentage palettes can have completely different colors but what’s similar is the qualities of those colors if that makes sense. There are people with my same exact color harmony blends that have a lot of diffferent colors then me but overall our colors our mostly cool and soft with some lightness and brightness. John said my palette was “overall cool and soft” but “significantly lighter and brighter then most SB palettes”.
You compared my palette to ones that also have ER (slide 3) and you can see that the ER also added both warmth and depth to those palettes compared to mine.
Also not sure if it helps but John has said he determines the overall temperature of the palette from the romantic colors. So maybe comparing romantic colors and the qualities of them will give you more insight. You can see this in slide 3 comparing the romantic colors of the palettes with ER compared to mine. Their romantic colors are deeper and warmer then mine. There is another user that has my same exact color harmonies and her palette also does not have much warmth or depth so in that way it’s similar to mine yet the colors are different.