Some colours make you look awake. Others make you look like you slept badly. It is not in your head, and it is not about which colours you like. It is about how a colour sits against your own colouring.
Three things decide it
Undertone, whether your skin leans warm, cool or neutral. Contrast, how far apart your hair, skin and eyes are in depth. And clarity, whether your colouring is bright and clear or soft and muted. Between them they place you in one of twelve seasons.
Reading your undertone
Daylight, no makeup, near a window. Hold something pure white next to your face, then something cream. If white makes your skin look grey or blotchy and cream makes it look calm, you lean warm. The other way round and you lean cool. If neither does much, you are probably neutral.
The vein test on your wrist is popular and not reliable on its own. Skin thickness changes what you see. Use it as one clue, never as the answer.
Reading your contrast
Take a photo of your bare face in daylight and turn it to black and white. If your hair, skin and eyes read as clearly different shades of grey, your contrast is high, and strong colour combinations suit you. If everything blends into a similar grey, your contrast is low, and colours close together in depth suit you better.
Reading your clarity
In the same black and white photo, look at your eyes. Clear whites and a distinct iris pattern point to a bright, clear colouring. Softer, hazier edges point to a muted one. Bright colouring carries saturated colour. Muted colouring is flattened by it.
Where guessing runs out
These three tell you roughly where you sit. Placing yourself in one of twelve seasons, rather than four, is where it gets hard on your own, because you are judging your own face in whatever light you happen to have, and because you are used to how you look.
That is the whole reason the colour analysis exists. You send your photos, I test the shades against your face, and you get your season in writing along with the palette.
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