Understanding neutral undertones is the secret to never having that horrible moment when your perfectly coordinated outfit looks completely wrong in natural light.
In this article, I’m diving into what interior design expert Maria Killam discovered about neutral undertones. We’ll explore the nine distinct neutral undertones she identified, how this applies to both your home and your personal style, and why this knowledge is the key to visual harmony in everything you wear.
I wrote about this back in 2007, and it’s still the most common style mistake I see. You’re getting dressed, everything looks perfect in your bedroom mirror, then you step outside and suddenly your beige blazer and other beige pants look like they’re from different planets.
Most people think neutrals automatically go together, but actually each neutral has an undertone that can either harmonize or clash with all the other neutral undertones.
Maria Killam, the interior design expert, discovered there are five types of beige alone: pink-beige, orange-beige, yellow-beige, gold-beige, and green-beige.
• Not all of these blend, some actively clash with each other. (If you are in the Spokane WA area and need a color consultant to help you choose paint colors, I am certified in her system. Use this link to book.)
• The same principle applies to grays and browns, they all have distinct undertones
• Even blacks can clash with each other
I learned this the hard way years ago when I ended up with a violet-gray pair of ankle pants from a clothing exchange and a green-gray blazer from thrifting. So close in color, but the undertones made them fight each other instead of working together.
This isn’t just about clothes. The same principle governs why some paint colors work together in your home while others create that indefinable “something’s off” feeling.
The Nine Neutral Undertones Everyone Should Know
Maria Killam identified nine distinct neutral undertones that show up consistently in both interior design and personal style. Understanding these is like having a secret decoder ring for visual harmony.
• Pink-beige: in home furnishings, this is the bossiest undertone and probably the most common.
• Orange-beige: not super common, it’s showing up more now that trends are warming up
• Yellow-beige: this is probably what you want if you are thinking about painting your house yellow, but don’t want to get too bright
• Gold-beige: richer and more saturated than yellow-beige, it reminds me of grandma’s house in the 60s and 70s
• Green-beige: a really versatile creamy color
• Green-grey: the color of concrete. Also the perfect color grout for white tile.
• Blue-gray: the coolest gray family, will often read as blue, but a perfectly achromatic grey would also fall into this family
• Violet-grey: gray with purple undertones, also super versatile. In a very light version, this kinda just looks like a beige.
• Taupe: warmer than grey, cooler than beige, with a violet or pink undertone, this is common amongst the indecisive
When you try to mix neutrals in the same value, but different undertones, you get that stealth clash that’s hard to pinpoint but impossible to ignore.
Here’s what’s interesting: undertones show up in human coloring as well. My own neutral palette includes yellow-beige (which goes with my hair), purple-gray (the ring around my iris), and orange-brown (one of my grandsons looked at my eyes in the sun and said they were orange!).
From House Colors to Personal Style: Which Color is the Boss?
Here’s where Maria Killam’s work connects to something much bigger about how we approach visual identity. In interior design, you can’t just pick colors you like – they have to work with the fixed elements of your house.
The same principle applies to personal style, but most people don’t realize it.
• In a house: the brick, roofing, and trim are fixed elements with inherent undertones
• In personal style: your skin, hair, and eyes are fixed elements with inherent undertones
• The paint colors must harmonize with the house’s fixed elements
• Your clothing colors must harmonize with your body’s inherent coloring
I was recently working with a group of True Colour Experts on a kitchen update. The key insight was that we had to choose the countertops first, because everything else – cabinet paint, backsplash, wall color – needed to harmonize with that fixed element.
This is exactly how I work with the color aspect of personal style. We start with your inherent coloring as the foundation, then add in colors that create harmony rather than competition.
Think about the houses on my block – a row of late 1940s bungalows. The first four are painted cream, green-beige, another beige, then gray, each with fresh, pretty trim colors that honor the architectural character. The fifth house is painted black. It’s completely out of place, not because black is wrong, but because it violates the inherent character of that architectural style.
Putting It All Together: Understanding Neutral Undertones
Understanding neutral undertones helps with something much more significant: creating visual identity integration between who you are internally and how you show up externally.
I grew up in an era when we were taught to match accessories and makeup to our outfit. The outfit was the composition, and we were supposed to conform to the clothes. Then came the Color Me Beautiful era, when people became aware that different colors looked better on different people. Now we’re working with a more sophisticated understanding: the entire look is a composition designed to enhance the wearer as a work of art.
• Your body’s inherent coloring is like a house’s fixed elements
• Your personal aesthetic preferences are like architectural character
• The colors you wear should harmonize with both elementsÂ
• When everything works together, you achieve visual identity integration
Most people think neutrals automatically go together, but actually each neutral has an undertone that can either harmonize or clash with all the other neutral undertones. When you understand your own neutral undertones, you can build a wardrobe that creates harmony instead of subtle discord.
This is exactly what we work on in The Congruence Code – discovering your energy, personality, and style foundations so everything you wear feels authentically you. Book yours today!
Here’s something simple you can do this week to integrate these principles into your wardrobe: Go through your neutral pieces – beiges, grays, browns, and taupes – and group them. Hold similar colors together in natural light and notice which ones actually harmonize versus which ones subtly clash. You might be surprised by what you discover about your own neutral undertones.