“Hi Kim, I have been buying covers and inserts from you for many years and making up my own folders for my customers for Personal Colour Analysis. I have worked with colour all my entire working life, from being an Interior Designer to now, for the last 10 years, being an Image Consultant. Personal Colour Analysis is what I do most of. Recently I had a huge influx of people and I found making up the folders myself to take forever and actually seemed to be not the best use of my precious time. It took DAYS. I started to think there must be an easier way. I dont work strictly to the seasons. I go through all of my drapes on every person picking out their best colours.
I see you have several different folders and wallets.
- Do the tonal folders contain the same selection of colours as the seasonal?
- Could you let me have a master list of all the colours you have?
I am thinking I would still do the draping the same as I do now, and then work out – which I could do quite quickly – which season or tonal group they fall into. Then they could have their folder straight away.
How would I handle it if there are 1 or 2 colours in the folders which don’t suit them?
Please let me know what works best for someone like me, to give my customers a wallet at the time of the consultation. That would be a dream, as then I would not have to spend a further 2 hours making up their personalised folder.” Warmest regards, Katie M, NZ
Dear Katie,
I (almost) admire image consultants like yourself who spend hours creating a personalised swatch wallet for each individual client but I have never understood exactly why you do it. I simply haven’t got the patience!
I’m so pleased to hear that you are having a huge influx of clients and I can totally understand why you’d like your valuable time back.
You can print these off right now:
- Full lists of contents for ALL the different colour swatch fans and wallets
- Full master list of all 173 drapes available, with seasonal & tonal notations
You ask, “How would I handle it if there are 1 or 2 colours in the folders which don’t suit them?” You need a way to mark those colours as unsuitable, or to mark their best colours.
I give each client a print-ready seasonal or tonal handout with all the swatch colours already listed – which makes this marking approach easy-peasy. You can use my handouts as templates in the colour analysis toolkit.
From thousands of years’ experience, I’ve found that:
- Most Winters will only ever use a maximum of 6 or 7 colours from any swatch wallet so all the others would have to be marked as unsuitable. That’s a total waste of my time so I just mark the ones that will ‘do it’ for them
- I haven’t found a Spring yet who can wear all 30 colours from the Spring seasonal fan so there are always some colours that need marking as ‘unsuitable’ or ‘keep well away from’!
- And more importantly, no-one will ever find an exact match in the shops so I don’t advocate putting too much energy into the actual contents of the swatch wallets
- Here’s my perspective on swatch wallets
Feel free to ask me more questions and well done on making this decision. Your clients will benefit from being given their swatch wallet and suggestions straight away, and you’ll get your life back!
