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What is a neutral??

deb

Veteran

I know the basics, black, white grey, etc. are neutrals but can cobalt or burgundy be a neutral? I have my closet arranged by color now and I have five colors evenly distributed, except for pants. I created a color board this afternoon and the neutral question came to mind. Since these colors are fairly evenly divided I had a hard time deciding which were neutrals and which were accent colors. I do have a few other colors, teal and red, in there. Are these the accent colors? The funny thing is, I did do this on purpose and most of these pieces are more than two years old.

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30 replies

Latest reply was from DonnaF

Jaime

(website)

Veteran

Great question - I think of neutral as a color that doesn't scream about itself but with all the recent threads on black I am no longer sure.

catgirl

Veteran

I don't know - after seeing MaryK in action I think everything is a neutral!

Adelfa

Veteran

Just IMO--burgundy leather is a neutral, but not usually burgundy cloth. And cobalt is an accent color. I wear a lot of both and that's how I think of them!

Liz A.

Veteran

I agree that burgundy is a neutral, but not cobalt. For me, a neutral has to do with how many other colors it can match with. Come to think of this, it could vary depending on the colors in your closet.

Caro in Oz

Veteran

In art it means having no hue (or colour) so the grey-scale white to black.
The fashion world generally uses it differently usually black, white, grey, most browns & navy are called neutrals but I know MaryK can give you an expanded version

ETA: It is also sometimes used to mean colours that are neither warm or cool.

ramya

Veteran

Burgandy and cobalt and red can be my neutrals. But as Caro says our neutral vary with our fashion sensibilities

Gigi

Veteran

My gut reaction is that burgundy can be a neutral but not cobalt. Cobalt to me seems like it just doesn't look its best when paired with a wide range of colors (I guess that is my definition of neutral). Burgundy seems like it is much more versatile...but not having a lot of it in my wardrobe, I can't say that for sure.

El Cee

Veteran

In my own wardrobe, burgundy often serves as a neutral. It seems to "play nicely" with so many other colors and doesn't try to "steal the show". Cobalt, for me, is too much of a show stealer to function as a neutral… but I love it nonetheless.

Thistle

Veteran

I so struggle with this myself!! I really don't know. I always thought it was black, white, and grey. But I have soooo many difficulties with color in general.

Keeping an eye on this post to get the wisdom of others!

MsMary

Veteran

LOL, I'm kind of with Una -- everything is a neutral if you mix it right. I have a lot of cobalt on my "2014 inspiration" board at Pinterest and you can see it goes with a whole lot of colors: http://www.pinterest.com/mrskp.....tion-2014/. I think I'd call it a "bright neutral." The trick, in my view, is to team it with other colors that are similarly bright.

always trying

Veteran

No one mentioned beige as neutral. IMO beige, black,grey, and white are the true neutrals. In interior decorating sage is considered a neutral. Not much sage in clothing, but there should be! I also feel lots of colors in pale shades can work as neutrals, but not many dark colors can.

Diana

Veteran

Hmm, I think of neutrals in the art sense that Caro describes (i.e. something with no or little hue). I make a distinction between neutrals and what I think of as "foundation colors," by which I mean colors that make up the foundation of your wardrobe (is there a real name for this?) and that go with the majority of things in your closet. So my foundation colors are black, grey, blue, and green/teal. Of these, I really only think of black and grey as neutrals.

Helena

Veteran

I define navy and denim as colors ... on the other hand, my beloved sister thinks pretty much everything is a neutral ... so I think as with most things fashion, this one's in the eye of the beholder!!

That said, I would define a neutral as a color which goes with any other color, which explains why my sister and I can both be correct (at least in our own minds!!!). That's just me though

kkards

Veteran

i like diana's way of thinking about it---neutrals and foundation colors, it really makes a lot of sense.

Aziraphale

Veteran

I've never thought to put words to this before, but I'm confident I know a neutral when I see it. In art and design, we're talking no hue at all -- greyscale only, from black to white and everything in between -- but in fashion, which is more practical, a neutral is something with little hue, as Diana says. It's not just a desaturated colour, because black and navy are both highly saturated and they're definitely neutrals.

Basically a neutral is not on the colour wheel. If you imagine mixing paint, it's what you'd get if you used only black and white, or mostly black or white along with all the primaries mixed together to get some shade of brown. Beige is included as a brown (with a lot of white pigment added) so it counts as a neutral. I'd also include navy, which is a dirty (i.e. brownish) blue with lots of black mixed in.

If you point to a neutral that isn't black, white or grey, and a child can't immediately come up with a word to describe it, it's probably a neutral. So that excludes cobalt (which any child can easily identify as "blue"), teal ("greenish-blue") and burgundy (probably "purple" or "red"). Kids don't have words for things like beige and stone and ivory, though.

A desaturated olive can be a neutral, but the greener it gets, the more likely that it's just "green", and not neutral.

Angie thinks red is a neutral because it goes with pretty much everything. I think she's wrong. Well, she's correct about the second part -- it does go with quite a range of other colours -- but it's not a neutral by my standards. It's RED. It's in the rainbow. Rainbow colours are not neutral.

shoppingisfun

(website)

Veteran

I always think of neutrals as colors that match everything. Like black, gray, beige, white, cream, and denim.

Gigi

Veteran

Aziraphale, I understand a bit of what you're saying (I like learning about colors...I'm pretty ignorant in this area), but wouldn't navy blue be on the color wheel? It would show up as shaded blue, i.e., blue mixed with black. So by that standard, it would not be a neutral. Or are you saying that in fashion, we can broaden the definition a bit?

deb

Veteran

Aziraphale, I like the idea of the color wheel and totally get it. "Basically a neutral is not on the colour wheel.", perfectly puts into words what a neutral is. So in my closet, the neutrals would be black, white, grey, and the major accent colors are burgundy and cobalt. The few other colors I have would be secondary accent colors?

Aziraphale

Veteran

Deb -- Yes, black white and grey would be neutrals, and cobalt and burgundy are proper colours. I'm not sure what you mean by accent colours, though. That's territory for someone else. (Red shoes or a red handbag in an otherwise neutral outfit provide an accent colour -- that's how I see it).

Gigi -- navy's not really on the colour wheel. It's dark, but it's not blue mixed with black, precisely. It actually includes a lot of brown.

I was arguing that brownish shades of olive count as neutral, too. I think the key is brown. Navy's similar in that way. Most people would describe navy as blue, but it's a very "neutralized" blue because of its brown content. (I know it's hard to imagine a blue as being brownish, but trust me, if you want to make navy paint, you actually mix ultramarine or french blue with a lot of dirt brown).

Bottom line: colours with predominantly grey and/or brown content are neutral. At some point this becomes subjective. For example, there are lots of shades of what we loosely describe as "olive" or "army green". Most of us would identify the more browny-beige ones as neutrals, but the more green you add, the more you inch towards an actual colour. Like I said, if your kid looks at a pair of olive pants and calls them "green", then they're green, and not neutral.

People can feel free to disagree with me, of course.

Susie

Veteran

I liked this description of colors from Anuschka at Into Mind:

Main colours: 3 – 4

Your main colours are the key ingredients of your colour palette. Look at the most dominant colours of your mood board and pick three to four shades that you feel best represent its overall feel, and that you can see yourself wearing a lot. I chose a soft blue, a light blue and a grey as the main colours for the example, because to me they best convey the overall cool-toned, light vibe of the mood board. The main colours of my example are all relatively muted but they could just as easily be a bright yellow, pink and turquoise or red, teal and navy. If I was developing a colour palette based on this mood board, my main colours would probably be peach, warm medium pink and tomato red.

Neutrals: 1 – 3

The neutral shades in your colour palette are supposed to support and balance out your main and accent colours. Obvious choices for neutrals are white, black, grey, navy and sand, but you could also pick a muted light blue, as long as it goes with all other colours in your palette. In the example, I chose white and the dark grey from the top-middle picture. During the initial picture search it can sometimes be quite easy to get carried away and just focus on the ‘real’ colours, so if your mood board doesn’t include any neutrals, brainstorm a few possible shades and test them out by adding an image of those colours to your mix.

Accent colours: 2 – 5

Any colour that you picked out from your mood board but that you don’t feel should play a main role or could work as a neutralizer, makes a good accent colour. They are worn primarily with neutrals, or in small doses with your main colours. In my example, the accent colours are a lot more colourful than the other shades, however black or white could also be an accent colour, e.g. to combine with a brighter main colour from time to time.

Aziraphale

Veteran

Susie, I'd argue that just because a colour "goes with a lot" doesn't mean it's a neutral. It could function in the same way a neutral does, though. For example, you can't tell me light blue and red don't count as actual colours -- anyone who's not colourblind can identify them! -- yet they both "go" (i.e. mix harmoniously) with an awful lot of other colours.

I would also argue that some neutrals don't "go" with everything. For example I think everyone can agree that black is a neutral, yet I think it looks bad with most bright colours (totally subjective, of course).

Caro in Oz

Veteran

always trying - beige is a whitened/lightened version of brown so we have warm beiges & cool ones (taupes) depending on which brown we start with.

deb

Veteran

Susie. so how do we apply Anuschka's theory in my closet? Is it based on the number of items you own by color? My black, white, burgundy, and cobalt are evenly split and the grey is a tad smaller. Would the cobalt and burgundy be my mail colors, with white, black and grey the neutral's? Then the other colors in my closet are accent colors?

Susie

Veteran

I should have linked to her blog post so that you could read the whole thing rather than what I just copied and pasted:

http://into-mind.com/2013/05/2.....-wardrobe/

I believe she does mean neutral as in how it functions- "The neutral shades in your colour palette are supposed to support and balance out your main and accent colours." I don't think it has to be a "noncolor" in order to work as a neutral, it just has to go with the main colors in a given palette.

During all the discussion of black recently, someone mentioned- Suz I believe- that she treats black as a color rather than a neutral. So it's not used as a support piece, but rather as the main or one of the main colors in the outfit.

Deb, I would think that gray is one of your neutrals. Black, white, burgundy and cobalt might all be your main colors- according to how Anuschka works with colors. Her emphasis is minimalism- so she recommends limiting colors to the numbers above. Then she continues by demonstrating how to split the colors among various pieces. (see more with the link above)

K. Period.

Veteran

Hmmm, interesting read! And great question. I've given up on the idea of neutral as an objective concept, really.

For me, there are neutrals that are truly neutrals, the non-colors that Elizabeth mentions. And then, to my mind, there are the rest of the other functional neutrals, which are colors that work well for you in the "plays well with others" category.

I find a lot of colors work well as neutrals for me that don't work well for others. My cobalt items almost work as a neutral right now because all of the other colors that I own to go with them play well with them. So, for me, for now, cobalt is a functional neutral. I think that is the same as Angie's red. For her it is a functional neutral.

Then there are the colors that I've learned to ignore as a color. Brown, beige, tan, stone, denim, light blue (especially in a woven button up), navy, all of those are colors, but my eye has adjusted (and most other people's eyes have too) and I no longer see them as a color. They are widely accepted functional neutrals.

Olive works the same way for me. I started seeing olive as a neutral several years ago and it works really well as one. I consider it the great forgotten neutral right now. But it looks fantastic with pastels, so I expect we'll start seeing a lot more of it soon. And with any color that has just a hint of black in it? Gorgeous. So my not-really-clear teal looks fantastic with olive. Or at least to my eye!

rachylou

Veteran

In fashion, I generally think of a neutral as your backdrop. It's like the matte surround that you pick to set off your picture, when you're having something framed. The neutral sets things off.

I see the use of "neutrals" as being tied to certain method of dressing and making outfits. You go out and buy a suit - pants, skirt, jacket - in your neutral. Then you'd make these foundational pieces work all week by wearing different blouses. Alternatively, you can also get your blouses in a neutral and make your outfits different with accessories - scarves, necklaces, etc.

Aziraphale

Veteran

K, that's a good way to look at it -- i.e. differentiating between "real neutrals" (black, white, all shades of grey and brown, and colours that are polluted so much with grey or brown that it neutralizes their hue, like army green and true navy) and "functional neutrals" (like light blue, red, or any other colour that's manifestly a rainbow colour but plays well with everything in your wardrobe). I'm on board.

minimalist

Veteran

What Adelfa, Liz A. and Gigi said.

IIRC, someone said that animal prints can be neutrals. For some people, that's probably true. Or functional neutrals, as K. Period. says. Following that, why not camo? Or Liberty prints?

Echo

Veteran

rachylou hit it on the head for me. Leaving colour theory aside, as people mostly disregard it when it comes to fashion anyway, a "neutral" to me acts as a backdrop to your accent pieces. That means that cobalt can ACT as a neutral if you are wearing a cobalt sheath, and black can ACT as an accent if you wear a black beaded statement necklace with aforementioned cobalt sheath.

Again, this is leaving aside the technicalities of colour or lack therof, saturation or matching. It is HOW you wear your colours as opposed to which colours you actually wear. Of course, it is difficult to base a wardrobe off a bright like cobalt or lime, so most people don't use brights as a true neutral in their wardrobe. But that doesn't stop a bright from being able to take on the role of neutral/backdrop in any particular outfit.

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