What to Wear for Your Family Christmas Portrait

What to Wear for Your Family Christmas/Holiday Portraits

Relax! Your portraits will focus on your faces, and I’ll help you feel comfortable and make sure you look great. Your outfits are secondary (there, that takes the pressure off, right?)

If you have special Christmas outfits – even matching PJ’s – that’s great, but definitely not necessary. The Christmas tree and background for our Making Spirits Bright event will be neutral, so whatever colors you want to wear will look wonderful. Red, burgundy, orange – they’ll all look great and nothing will clash with our background.

If you’re not sure what to wear, here are a few simple tips in selecting outfits:

1. Solid colors photograph well. Generally the family should be in similar tones, but not necessarily similar colors – for instance, neutrals, bright colors, deep colors, or pastels.
2. You don’t need to match (unless you want to). Varying colors lets each person stand out a bit, without putting focus on an individual. Think of it like this: your family all decides to wear black tops, but one member wears white, and becomes the focus of the portrait, whether they want to be or not!
3. The place to match is in overall style, whether casual, dressy, formal, or pj’s!
4. To create a color palette, choose one or two neutral colors, such as beige, grey, navy, black or white; then add one or two accent colors – red, aqua, yellow – whatever suits your family. Mix it up within your palette, ideally so each person has their own combination of colors.
5. Patterns often look good when they are the same type of pattern, such as plaid, stripes, etc. They don’t need to match to look good, and sometimes they can tie the palette colors together.