Fall is a cozy and heart-warming time of year, perfect for capturing your family’s pictures and memories to cherish forever! With the chilly weather, you and your family can bundle up in layers, adding more visual interest and depth to your fall pictures. However, knowing which colors to coordinate your family’s outfits with can be difficult. To help you know what colors are good for fall pictures and how to style your family’s outfits, we want to share gorgeous fall picture color schemes that look elegant with the changing leaves!
Choosing Fall Color Palettes
When choosing fall color palettes for your outfits, we recommend selecting light, neutral, and earthy-toned colors instead of bright, bold, or neon colors because they photograph softer and complement your skin tones! Bright, bold, or neon colors create unflattering skin tones and take the focus away from where it should be: you and your family! If you would like to incorporate a few pops of color into your session, we suggest choosing more sophisticated, jewel-toned versions of bright, primary colors. For example, you could select bronze or camel instead of orange, or you could choose mustard or pale yellow instead of yellow. To highlight the leaves’ orange, green, and brown tones, we suggest incorporating mustards, pale yellows, bronzes, sages, tans, beiges, and khakis into your outfits.
Colors for Fall Pictures
Dominant & Accent Colors
We recommend coordinating your family’s outfits by mixing up different, complementing colors and shades from fall picture color schemes so you’ll have more variety and visual interest in your photos! We suggest selecting a “dominant” color and tying in “accent” colors for each outfit. A dominant color is the one that composes a majority of the outfit, while an accent color has a smaller piece of visual real estate. Aim for each family member’s outfit to have a different dominant color and incorporate complementing colors from the other outfits as accent colors so everyone’s outfits form a cohesive palette and uniquely highlight each family member! Most moms choose their outfits first and then build the rest of their family’s outfits with colors that coordinate that outfit.
What to Avoid
We highly recommend avoiding small, complex, repetitive patterns and lines, especially in shirts, because they’re distracting and can create unusual colors and overlapping, warped, distorted patterns in your images! In extreme cases, the damage could be irreversible, ruining your pictures! Therefore, we recommend wearing solid, neutral colors and simple designs.
Also, we suggest avoiding logos.
Coordinating Your Family’s Outfits with Fall Picture Color Schemes
Example 1: Sage, White, and Tan Color Palette for Fall Family Pictures:
You could wear a sage dress with a soft gold necklace and tan heels (making sage your dominant color). Your husband could then wear a sage solid, collared shirt with a tan tie, a white sweater, tan corduroys, and tan leather dress shoes (making white his dominant color). Your daughter could wear a cream dress with a sage hair bow and tan booties (making cream her dominant color). Your son could then wear a pale-yellow solid, collared shirt with a white tie, white dress pants, and tan leather dress shoes (making pale yellow his dominant color).
For more visual interest in your fall family photos, you could incorporate accessories with complementing accent colors, such as a bouquet or basket of fresh florals, cardigans, ties, suspenders, necklaces, bracelets, or a light-colored blanket! Each family member would have their dominant color while sprinkling in accent colors, making the outfits look connected and cohesive! These choices would visually break up the colors and highlight each person! (God has blessed us with a collection of women’s dresses for the client closet, which is available for 1-Hour and 2-Hour Portrait Experiences, so we pray it’ll be a blessing to you and/or your senior girl! The sage women’s dress in this example is available in small, medium, and large in the client closet for 1-Hour and 2-Hour Portrait Experiences!)
Example 2: French Gold, Bronze, and Beige Color Scheme for Fall Family Photos:
You could wear a French gold dress with a soft gold necklace and tan ballet flats (making French gold your dominant color). Your husband could then wear a beige sweater with a white T-shirt, a beige solid, collared shirt, bronze corduroys, and tan leather dress shoes (making beige his dominant color). Your daughter could wear a cream dress with a French gold sweater, beige ballet flats, and a bronze hair bow (making cream her dominant color). Your son could then wear a solid white, collared shirt with tan dress pants, a bronze bow tie, and tan leather dress shoes (making white his dominant color).
For more visual interest in your fall family pictures, you could add accessories with accent colors that pair well so each family member has their dominant color while incorporating accent colors! (The French gold women’s dress in this example is available in small, medium, and large in the client closet for 1-Hour and 2-Hour Portrait Experiences!)
Cold-Weather Tips for Fall Outfits
It can get too chilly during the changing seasons to wear a dress and heels or a short-sleeved polo and dress shorts by themselves. We suggest getting creative with cold-weather accessories like scarves, shawls, hats, sweater vests, and statement coats! Layering these pieces will help keep your family and kiddos toasty while creating more visual interest in your pictures!
You can pair your dress or skirt with a sweater and warm tights or wear a snuggly sweater with a pair of dress pants or jeans. You can never go wrong with closed-toed ballet flats, heels, tall dress boots, or heeled booties! We suggest layering a long-sleeved, large-print plaid or solid, collared shirt with a sweater, sweater vest, or blazer for men. If he’s going for a more editorial style, he could incorporate a tie or suspenders into his look, and he could always wear a pair of closed-toed, leather dress shoes, dress boots, or boat shoes!
The same tips apply to your little ones! Try dressing them in layers and warm accessories. We suggest they wear closed-toed dress shoes, ballet flats, dress boots, boat shoes, or booties to warm their toes!
Outfit Tip for 1-Hour and 2-Hour Couple’s and Senior Portrait Experience Optional Outfit Change(s):
Depending on your 1-Hour or 2-Hour Couple’s or Senior Portrait Experience (which you can find on our Couple’s Photography or Senior Photography page), you can include an optional outfit change(s) into your session, adding more variety to your photos! If you decide to incorporate an optional outfit change(s), we recommend arriving in a formal outfit and packing a casual one(s) for later in your session. It’ll help your session end on a more comfortable, relaxing note!
We also suggest coordinating the outfit you wear to your session with the outfit change(s) you bring so all the images in your gallery, blog post, and album (if you have chosen to have a blog post and/or album) will pair well and look connected! For example, if you wear a sage dress with beige and white flowers to your session, you could bring a pair of beige khakis, a sage dress shirt, and a white sweater for an outfit change. That way, the two outfits would complement one another in your gallery, blog post, and album (if you have chosen to have a blog post and/or album), creating an editorial look!
Outfit Tips for 2-Hour Senior & Family Portrait Experience Optional Family and Sibling Portraits
If you decide to include optional family and sibling portraits in your 2-Hour Senior & Family Portrait Experience, we recommend coordinating your family’s outfits with your senior’s outfit(s), so they complement one another in your photos!
One Final Note
We hope you enjoy these gorgeous fall picture color schemes! Once you’ve booked your portrait experience, you’ll receive a booking confirmation email containing The JHP Portrait Experience & Style Guide. This guide will give you color palette inspiration for fall and other seasons while helping you meet with your family, style your outfits, flatter your features, pack, prepare for your session, and have the best portrait experience!
“Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13 New Living Translation). Always remember, even though your style choices will enhance your photos, the outfits your family wears won’t matter as much as your love, joy, and connection with one another! Also, Sweet Friend, let me lean in and tell you- God made you and your family beautiful! He treasures you! “Thank you [LORD] for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it” (Psalm 139:14 NLT).
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at Jenn@JenniferHallPhotographyLLC.com! If you would like to learn more about selecting colors for and coordinating your family’s outfits and get more helpful tips, you can sign up for our free 5 Impactful Tips for Creating a Fun, Meaningful Family Portrait Experience Guide on our website today! When you sign up for this guide, you’ll also receive Exclusive VIP Email Access and be the first to know about our upcoming portrait experiences, mini-sessions, giveaways, model calls, latest client education blog posts, newest styling options, and special JHP announcements! Have fun styling!
