PrintFresh Pajamas and Your Color Palette

Just like Carrie Bradshaw and her Manolo’s, sometimes a gorgeously designed piece of apparel can grab your imagination, and suddenly you’re daydreaming about the fabulous adventures that you and that clothing are going to have together.

Exciting nights! Beautiful mornings! Interesting people!

Meet PrintFresh Pajamas

That was me when PrintFresh pajamas fell into my IG feed. Bright happy cats with mermaid tails, and taxicabs hanging out with spotted leopards. It was all so ridiculous and I wanted to soak up that good energy and sprinkle it around everywhere.

But how to choose the right print for my Dark Autumn color palette?

If you’re trying to live your best life in your best colors, prints are waayyy off the reservation. They’re this unholy cocktail of bright colors, and dark colors, and cool colors, and warm colors, and the designer does not give a flying flip that they just wrecked your perfect color palette world.

The designer had a vision and you have the opportunity to step into that vision and be charmed.

So what are you to do?

Do not worry Sister, I’ve got you covered with 4 simple guidelines.

But first, hear me now. These are not rules. We don’t do rules around here. Just suggestions that you can take or leave. Because you’re a grown-ass woman and you can organize yourself.

But if you’re interested in my advice, I’m happy to share it with you.

(…slowly steps down from her soapbox…)

Four Simple Guidelines

Look at the print that has captured your fancy and ask yourself these questions:

What color in the print stands out to you the most? Could you envision that color in your palette?
Look at the background color on the fabric. Could you see that blending in with your palette?
When you look at the entire print, what does your gut tell you? Does it feel like it fights with your color palette? Or could it sort of work?
Use the words that you learned when you received your color palette. Soft, bright, warm, muted. Whatever your words are, do those speak to you when you look at that crazy print?

And Stephanie’s Golden Rule:

If you love it, wear it. If you want to sleep in hot pink pajamas with swooping turquoise hummingbirds, but none of that is in your color palette, throw the dang guidelines out the window and wear the thing that makes you the happiest. Life can be hard enough. Wearing prints doesn’t have to be.

So, what to do with the noisy PrintFresh Pajamas? I went through and analyzed the colors for you!

Here’s a spreadsheet that lists all of the current Printfresh prints, and tells you which season it can work well with. If you’re one of the bright seasons, you’ve got lots to choose from. If you’re soft, there are fewer. Tis the nature of dancing unicorn pajamas.