Grow taller visually
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Choose accent colors brighter and main colors darker

Choose accent colors brighter and main colors darker

According to the lightness illusion, light colors expand objects, while dark colors narrow them.

A dark square on a light background appears smaller than a light square on a dark background
Image. Lightness illusion. Bright stimuli on a dark surface appear larger than similarly sized dark stimuli on a bright surface.

From an evolutionary perspective, this feature of our vision is useful because it allows us to see objects better in the dark, such as predators at night.

Light hair can make you appear shorter

Research has found that light hair color can visually reduce body height, blur facial features, and make shoulders and neck appear wider. In contrast, black hair slims and emphasizes contours.1

Darker clothing slims the body

Clothing has a similar effect. Dark colors visually make people appear a few kilograms lighter.23 The effect is enhanced if there is a dark background behind the person.

Black and red colors are attractive

In the study, 6 dress colors — black, gray, white, red, green, and blue — black and red enhanced body attractiveness. The same colors, along with blue, added a slimming effect. Conversely, green and gray had the opposite effect. 4

Brighter clothing attracts attention

Use clothing details in bright and colorful colors to grab attention to desired parts of the body.

As main colors, they are less suitable. In clothing of a saturated color, you will appear more larger.5 Moreover, observers will scrutinize your outfit more carefully, which can lead to a shift in focus towards less important details and lower the eye line. It is better to choose something darker.

  1. Li, Eun-Ji & Shim, Boo-Ja. (2003). Effects of Hair Colors on the Optical Illusion of Body Types. Fashion business. 7. ↩

  2. Koutsoumpis, A., Economou, E., & van der Burg, E. (2021). Helmholtz Versus Haute Couture: How Horizontal Stripes and Dark Clothes Make You Look Thinner. Perception, 50(9), 741–756. https://doi.org/10.1177/03010066211038158 ↩

  3. K. Martynov, K. Garimella and R. West, Darks and Stripes: Effects of Clothing on Weight Perception, in Journal of Social Computing, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 53-70, September 2020, doi: 10.23919/JSC.2020.0006. ↩

  4. Nimreth Sidhu;Chloe Qualter;Emily Higgs;Kun Guo; (2021). What colour should I wear? How clothing colour affects women’s judgement of other women’s body attractiveness and body size . Acta Psychologica, (), –. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103338 ↩

  5. Henrik Hagtvedt , S Adam Brasel, Color Saturation Increases Perceived Product Size, Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 44, Issue 2, August 2017, Pages 396–413, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx039 ↩

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