We want to help you or your senior girl look your best, flatter your features, and feel comfortable and confident during your session with these portrait styling tips for women or senior girls! By explaining what women or senior girls should wear for portraits, from outfit colors and styles to shoes and accessories, these tips will help you create timeless and flattering images you’ll love!
Selecting Colors & Designs for Your Portraits
When choosing women’s or senior girls’ outfits, we recommend selecting light, neutral, and solid colors because they photograph softer, flatter skin tones and look elegant and timeless. In contrast, bright, bold, or neon colors create unflattering skin tones and reflections in your photos and distract from you, your senior girl, or your family! We strongly recommend avoiding tiny, busy, repetitive patterns and lines because they’re distracting and can form unusual colors and overlapping, distorted patterns in your pictures. Therefore, we suggest wearing light, solid, and neutral colors and simple designs.
Also, we suggest avoiding wearing logos.
How to Coordinate Your Family’s Outfits for Family Portraits
When coordinating your family’s outfits for family portraits, we suggest choosing mom’s outfit first and then building a cohesive color palette around what colors pair well with it. Each family member could then wear a color from the palette as their outfit’s dominant color. With their accessories, each person could tie in colors from the other outfits as their accent colors. That way, everyone wouldn’t be wearing the same color, but each person’s outfit would have a unique look while mixing all the colors!
For example, you could wear a long, flowy navy dress with a cream sweater (making navy your dominant color). Your husband could then wear a light blue solid, collared shirt with a navy tie and beige khakis (making light blue his dominant color). Your daughter could wear a powder blue dress with a navy and white floral design (making powder blue her dominant color). Your son could then wear a beige suit vest with beige dress pants, a solid white collared shirt, and a light blue bow tie (making beige his dominant color).
You can view our blog post, Fall Picture Color Schemes, for information about what colors to wear for your fall pictures. To help you prepare for your family portrait experience, feel free to browse our How to Prepare for Family Photos blog post.
Portrait Styling Tips for Choosing Women’s or Senior Girls’ Dresses or Skirts
These styling tips for women or senior girls can help you create elegant, flattering portraits! Dresses and skirts flatter a variety of body types, create an elegant look, and add more movement to your images! We also suggest you or your senior girl wear a dress or skirt that you feel comfortable and confident in and doesn’t limit your mobility when posing or walking. Long, flowy dresses and skirts are perfect for twirling and creating more elegance in your photos (especially your walking ones). Medium-length dresses and midi skirts also look beautiful!
If it’s chilly outside, we recommend you or your senior girl wear a dress jacket and warm tights with your dress or skirt, or you could wear a sweater with a pair of dress pants, khakis, or jeans. Feel free to wear layers and add cold-weather accessories like scarves, shawls, sweaters, and hats for a cute touch while helping you or your senior girl stay warm!
The Client Closet to Bless Women and/or Senior Girls (for 1-Hour and 2-Hour Portrait Experiences)
God has blessed us with everything we’ve needed for the client closet, so we pray it will be a blessing to you and/or your senior girl! If you would like, you and/or your senior girl can borrow a women’s dress(es) for your 1-Hour or 2-Hour Portrait Experience! You can view our small selection of women’s dresses in the client closet section of The JHP Portrait Experience & Style Guide. You will receive this guide in your booking confirmation email. All the women’s dresses in the client closet are from Baltic Born, one of our favorite places to shop for elegant, flattering dresses.
Portrait Styling Tips for Women or Senior Girls to Flatter Their Features
To help you or your senior girl feel comfortable and confident, we suggest selecting styles and colors that flatter areas you may feel self-conscious about. It will help you or your senior girl love how you look and feel in your images. By wearing an outfit that flatters the parts of you that you love the most and allows you to be confident, you or your senior girl can cherish this memorable time with your family without worrying about how your clothes fit. If you or your senior girl feel uncomfortable looking in the mirror (having to suck in and only feeling confident from one side), we suggest selecting a different outfit that you feel more comfortable in and flatters your features best. Below, we have included several flattering portrait clothing ideas for women or senior girls.
Ways to Flatter Women’s or Senior Girls’ Arms for Portraits
We suggest avoiding skinny straps or strapless dresses if you or your senior girl are aiming for slimmer-looking arms because they can cause arms to appear larger on camera. If your dress or your senior girl’s dress has short or no sleeves, try pairing it with a sweater, jacket, blazer, cardigan, or chiffon shawl, creating more visual interest in your photos. Three-quarter-length and longer sleeves also make arms appear slimmer.
Portrait Clothing Ideas for Women or Senior Girls to Flatter Their Waists
If you are aiming for a slimmer-looking waist in your portraits, some clothing ideas for women or senior girls are to wear:
- an empire waist dress
- a high-waisted skirt
- high-waisted dress pants or jeans
Portrait Styling Tips for Women or Senior Girls to Flatter Their Legs
If you or your senior girl are aiming for slimmer-looking legs, we suggest wearing:
- a long skirt or dress
- long dress pants or jeans
Shoes Women or Senior Girls Should Wear for Portraits
Since heels elongate women’s or senior girls’ legs and create tension in the calves, they cause them to look more toned. Closed-toed heels photograph beautifully because they connect the line of the leg with the toe. If you or your senior girl would like to make your session more comfortable while creating a gorgeous look, ballet flats are a great option!
Neutral, closed-toed ballet flats, heels, tall dress boots, or heeled booties are beautiful and comfortable any time of year; they will also help keep your feet or your senior girl’s feet warm during colder weather.
If you or your senior girl wears heels to your session, we recommend packing a pair of flats/flip-flops to wear when traveling between photo spots to prevent your feet from hurting. If you would like, and the location allows it, you or your senior girl could take your shoes off for a couple of photos, creating a casual look!
Women’s or Senior Girls’ Accessory Tips for Portraits
Adding one or two accessories to your outfit or your senior girl’s outfit, like a necklace, belt, bracelet, chiffon shawl, earrings, ring, or scarf, creates more visual interest in your images! Fresh floral crowns, baskets, or bouquets look elegant and editorial for warmer weather. Scarves, sweaters, mittens, hats, cardigans, shawls, and boot cuffs add visual interest to your photos while keeping you or your senior girl warm during colder weather. A light-colored blanket for your family to sit on adds a beautiful touch year-long!
For each person’s outfit, we suggest wearing one or two accessories that won’t compete with the outfit’s other accessories. For example, if the outfit includes bolder earrings, try selecting a humbler or no necklace.
The Benefits of Professional Hair and Makeup
You or your senior girl can cherish these photos for years, so have a little fun with this special experience! Professional hair and makeup photograph beautifully, and you or your senior girl won’t have to worry about getting ready yourselves. If you or your senior girl decide to hire a makeup artist, we recommend requesting that, if it is possible, they apply your makeup in natural light so it appears fresh and light in your photos. We’ll be photographing in natural light, giving you an idea of how it will look on camera. If your makeup or your senior girl’s makeup feels like it is too much at first since it’s more than you would wear on a normal day, don’t worry because good makeup artists know how to apply it well for photography.
Optional Outfit Change(s) Tip (for 1-Hour and 2-Hour Couple’s and Senior Portrait Experiences)
If you or your senior girl decides to include an optional outfit change(s) in your 1-Hour or 2-Hour Couple’s or Senior Portrait Experience, we recommend you or your senior girl arrive in a formal outfit and pack a casual one(s) for later in your session, creating a more comfortable look towards the end. You can coordinate the outfit you or your senior girl wears to your session with the outfit change(s) you bring, causing the images in your gallery to complement one another. It will also help your blog post, album, and/or wall display photos fit well together!
For example, if you or your senior girl wear a long, flowy navy dress with a cream sweater to your session, you could pack a more casual powder blue dress with a navy and white floral design for an outfit change. That way, the two outfits would coordinate, capturing elegant and slightly casual portraits in one session!
For a more casual portrait experience, if you or your senior girl wear a slightly casual powder blue dress with a navy and white floral design to your session, you could bring a pair of jeans and a white dress shirt for an outfit change. The two outfits would then complement one another, making your portraits look editorial with a casual style! To capture a formal and casual look, you or your senior girl could wear a long, flowy navy dress with a cream sweater to your session and bring a pair of jeans with a white dress shirt for a casual outfit change.
One Final Note
“Thank you [LORD] for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it” (Psalm 139:14 NLT).
Sweet Friend, let me lean in and tell you that God loves and cares about you and your family so much that He has made you “so wonderfully complex” and unique! You are His beautiful, valuable, and priceless masterpieces whom He deeply loves and treasures! Please know that you are loved, cherished, and beautiful!
We hope these portrait styling tips for women or senior girls will help you cherish your portrait experience and create images you’ll love! Feel free to email us at Jenn@JenniferHallPhotographyLLC.com if you have any questions!
Do you want to learn helpful tips about preparing for your family portrait session? 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!
