Saturation in Clothing
Saturation (also chroma) describes the intensity of any given color in clothing.
A fully saturated color has neither black nor white or gray mixed into it, which gives it neither a shade nor a tint. Any fully saturated color is therefore of neutral value and pure hue.
The overall saturation of an outfit is determined by a mixture of the colors of all pieces of clothing together.
Wearing more unsaturated pieces reduces the overall outfit saturation. Wearing more saturated pieces does the opposite – to some extent.
Wearing complimentary colors reduces the overall perceived saturation.
The more analogous or identical the fully saturated pieces of clothing, the more saturated the overall outfit is perceived.
Image 1: Tints and shades of green
Image 2: unsaturated to saturated green
In our first example image, the color green is shown with its spectrum from fully tinted (left, white) to completely shaded (right, black). In the middle is the fully saturated color. This is also a good example of the different values of the color green.
In the second example, the color green goes from full chroma with the same luminance (left) to complete neutral value (right). Since the green hue has very high luminance, the unsaturated version of it (left) is almost white.
Read more about shades, tints, and contrast in our article about dark versus light clothing colors.
