Tones in Clothing

The concept of tones in clothing is a different one to tones in regular color theory, where a tone is what you get when you add gray to a color.

We at COLORBUX think that the use of “tones” is obsolete. We refer to colors that have added gray as “unsaturated”. In the case of a color becoming less saturated, it also appears to be more grayed out – because it’s luminance stays the same but it’s hues fade.

Should the luminance change, we would call this either shading (darkening) or tinting (lightening). So, for us, creating a tone of a color is simply the process of removing (desaturating) color and maybe changing its value. What? - Don’t fret, the following example illustrates this concept further:

The color magenta: saturated and unsaturated (top/bottom) with all it’s tints and shades (left/right).

In fashion, we call the colors of pieces of clothing that are less bright “unsaturated”. These unsaturated elements (“tones”, if you will) are best used as canvas colors because they simply lay a good foundation to build the rest of the outfit upon.

Tones are usually easy to match and combine with other colors since the hue of the tone isn’t as obvious and doesn’t stand out too much. Wearing unsaturated or grayed out colors is usually best suited for less chromatically inclined people...

The topic of tones is closely related to that of luminance. Click here to learn more.