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Free tools/Outfit palettes

Outfit Color Palette Planner

Start from one color you already own and get three coordinated palettes, assigned person by person.

Why one color to start

“What should we wear?” is the question that decides more about how a family portrait looks than the location does, and the usual answer — everyone in white shirts and jeans — is the one that photographs worst.

Each palette is built around your color with actual color-harmony math, spread across the people who will be standing in the frame, with notes on how it behaves in Nebraska light in the season you are shooting.

Everything is generated in your browser. No signup, no uploads, and the share link is just a URL with your choices in it.

Start from one color
Something you already own

Pick the color of a dress or a jacket that already exists. Building a palette around something you own is the difference between a plan and a shopping trip.

#8A9A7B
Where and when
Adults
2 adults
Children
2 children

Layered neighbours

5 colors
  • muted olive#6F835F
  • softer olive#A2A689
  • muted green#ABBDAB
  • oat#C3C9C1
  • deep olive#383E32

Three hues sitting next to each other on the wheel, separated by lightness rather than color. This is the safest of the three and the hardest to get wrong: everyone reads as part of one group, and nobody disappears into anybody else.

Who wears what

  • Adult 1deep olive · #383E32The anchor. Deepest value in the group, and the person everyone else is arranged around.
  • Adult 2softer olive · #A2A689Sits against the anchor without matching it. If two adults will stand together in most frames, this is the pairing that matters.
  • Child 1oat · #C3C9C1Lightest value in the palette. Children read better light against a darker group, and it survives grass stains better than you would think.
  • Child 2muted green · #ABBDABA second light value, close to the first but not identical. Siblings in matching outfits look like a school photograph.
  • Pattern allowancemuted olive · #6F835FOne person, usually a child, may wear a small pattern that contains two or three of these colors. One. A second pattern anywhere in the frame and the palette stops working.

Quiet opposite

5 colors
  • muted olive#8B9F7B
  • muted indigo#70617C
  • softer olive#B9C2B2
  • oat#C6C1CA
  • deep olive#32392D

The opposite hue, desaturated hard so it supports the base instead of arguing with it. Put the complement on one or two people only — it is the accent, and the moment three people wear it the photograph turns into a chessboard.

Who wears what

  • Adult 1deep olive · #32392DThe anchor. Deepest value in the group, and the person everyone else is arranged around.
  • Adult 2muted olive · #8B9F7BSits against the anchor without matching it. If two adults will stand together in most frames, this is the pairing that matters.
  • Child 1oat · #C6C1CALightest value in the palette. Children read better light against a darker group, and it survives grass stains better than you would think.
  • Child 2softer olive · #B9C2B2A second light value, close to the first but not identical. Siblings in matching outfits look like a school photograph.
  • Pattern allowancemuted olive · #8B9F7BOne person, usually a child, may wear a small pattern that contains two or three of these colors. One. A second pattern anywhere in the frame and the palette stops working.

One note, three neutrals

5 colors
  • muted olive#7A9C60
  • ivory#E0E2DF
  • greige#A2AB9C
  • deeper olive#606A58
  • char#2D312B

Your color appears once, on one person, and everyone else wears a neutral carrying the same underlying hue. It is the most editorial of the three and the most forgiving in bright light — and it is the one to pick if you are photographing more than six people.

Who wears what

  • Adult 1char · #2D312BThe anchor. Deepest value in the group, and the person everyone else is arranged around.
  • Adult 2muted olive · #7A9C60Sits against the anchor without matching it. If two adults will stand together in most frames, this is the pairing that matters.
  • Child 1ivory · #E0E2DFLightest value in the palette. Children read better light against a darker group, and it survives grass stains better than you would think.
  • Child 2greige · #A2AB9CA second light value, close to the first but not identical. Siblings in matching outfits look like a school photograph.
  • Pattern allowancemuted olive · #7A9C60One person, usually a child, may wear a small pattern that contains two or three of these colors. One. A second pattern anywhere in the frame and the palette stops working.

Notes on the season

Nebraska

Fall is the busiest portrait season in this state for a reason: the tallgrass turns copper, the maples turn red, and the light goes warm and low for weeks. The trap is matching it exactly — a family in head-to-toe orange in front of orange trees vanishes. Sit slightly off the landscape instead: deep greens, blues, plums, and warm neutrals stand out against fall color rather than dissolving into it.

Backlit late light turns everything slightly warm and lifts the whole frame a stop, so pale colors get paler and lose their edges. Mid-to-deep values keep their shape when the sun is behind you. Sheer fabric glows beautifully in that light — and so does anything you did not intend to be sheer, which is worth checking beforehand.

Three rules that survive every session

Coordinate, do not match. Everyone in the identical shade reads as a uniform. Everyone inside the same palette, at different values, reads as a family.

Spread the values out. If every person is the same lightness, the group merges into one shape in the photograph. You want a dark, a mid, and a light in any group of three or more.

Comfort beats the plan. A child in something scratchy will end the session forty minutes early, and no palette survives that. Wear it around the house first.