Want your OOTD to look sleek and sharp? Colour blocking is the hack to style your outfits like a pro

Whether it is for a slimming illusion or to appear taller, colours can change the perception of your outfit of the day's silhouette.

Colour is no longer confined to the breezy yet cliched question your date throws at you, ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ Even if colour plays second fiddle in your wardrobe when you have more snatched cuts, prints and necklines to favour your frame, colour is still instrumental in moulding perception and your outfit silhouette.

Know how to make your colour work in your favour.(Pinterest)

In fact, you may be in the dark if your approach to colour styling is limited to your mood. Colour is now treated as a major tool in fashion. Fashion enthusiasts are lining up for the popular personal colour analysis, where people are draped in colour swatches to understand which shade looks cohesive and complementary with their undertone.

So, colour is no longer secondary; it’s strategic and smart. Far beyond your rushed morning mood check with colour, now it is more about refining how you look, including making you appear sharper, taller and slimmer.

Ipshita Das, Founder of DizzyDuck, shared with HT Lifestyle how colours help in making your frame look sleeker and more elegant.

Highlighting one of the common techniques, called colour blocking, she elaborated,"Colour blocking is a thoughtful technique based on colour theory, as it is employed by using solid blocks of either contrasting or complementary colours in one outfit for dramatic and complementary visual effects."

Colour blocking techniques take form in several ways, from bright colours for the chic pop the grounding neutrals. Weighing in on how colours help to modify the visual interest of the look, she explained, “A bright pop of neon, or perhaps a monochrome moment, no matter the colours you are wearing, how you lay down the colours can modify how you slim or lengthen, or emphasise whatever you are wearing when worn aesthetically equally. Having a sense of how colours work together and affect how we perceive colour provides a level of control to manipulate proportions, showcase characteristics, or establish balance”

Ipshita Das shared a detailed guide with us, covering the key ways to style your colours so that you can cleverly slim, elongate, or accentuate your frame, just by playing with placement, contrast, and colour families:

1. Make it slim with the darks

• One of the oldest colour and simplest tricks is to use black or dark colours to reduce the look of bulk areas.
• If dark colours are used as side panels, outer edges, or stripes, then they can make a whole outfit look slim, like contouring or shading with your makeup.
• Using black, navy, charcoal, or deep burgundy on the outer parts of your body, these outer colours added to your outfit can give a visual slim look, especially the waist and thighs.

2. Make the colour pop

• To draw focus to your shoulders, legs, or curves, a lively block of colour can be used. For example: vivid red, cobalt blue, or fuchsia.
• Bright blocks of colour by nature are going to pop where you want to accent your body; hence, when wearing a mustard yellow silky dress and dark-colored trousers, you now have a choice for where to put visual demands, such that the outfit's overall upper half is taken into account.

3. Create curves with contrast at the waist

• Creating a definition at the waist is easily achieved by placing a contrasting colour, such as a bold belt or midsection panel, at the waist.
• This will draw in the eye and create the illusion of an hourglass shape by overlaying the sub-section again. You are breaking the view into three, flattering sections. The waist is tucked in, and the overall look will appear more sculpted.

4. Elongate monochrome

• Wearing all one colour, known as monochromatic colour blocking, helps elongate the body by creating one continuous line visually.
• This works best with streamlined outfits in earthy tones (such as olive, beige, deep green) or bold palettes (all white or all red).
• It's best to wear a colour that resonates with your skin tone, as it enhances the body.

5. Balance your proportions

• Colour blocking can also create balance in disproportionate body shape situations.
• If you are broader on top, limit the colours of the top section to dark shades; the same goes for bottom-heavy, with dark shades on the bottom.
• You are still using colour blocking, but you are using contrast to help move the eye and create symmetry and balance to your frame.

Before implementing colour blocking, or really, for good styling in general, understanding the colour wheel is essential.

Explaining the colour wheel, Ipshita concluded, “Understanding the colour wheel is essential for colour blocking. Complementary colours, such as orange and blue or purple and yellow, create eye-popping contrasts, while colours that are analogous (colours sitting next to each other on the wheel,) pink and red, are more akin to transitional and blended colours. Each of these systems affords you an opportunity to tell a story, depending upon the level of drama or placement of colour you want to create.”