Neutrals: The Best Clothing Colors For Men

Building a wardrobe full of neutral colors is a great idea for any man – regardless of body type, age, skin tone or style preferences.

This article explains why I love wearing neutral colors and why all of my wardrobe staples are in neutral colors.

Neutrals colors include black, white, any shade of grey, beige/cream and navy.

Even if you only wore these colors, you could be well-dressed and stylish every single day, no matter the occasion.

If you throw in a couple more versatile colors, such as olive and light blue, you’ve got a complete wardrobe.

Here’s the best part: if you like other, less standard colors, they will also work with this palette.

For example, if you love wearing burgundy or look great in yellow, both of those colors work well on top of a neutral wardrobe.

You don’t have to add extra colors, but it’s very easy to do so.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of wearing neutral colors.

All Your Clothes Look Good Together

With a neutral wardrobe, putting together an outfit or packing for a trip is a breeze. You can almost get dressed in the dark because everything goes together.

Here’s one example: a light grey shirt can be worn with pants that are black, charcoal, white, navy, tan or olive.

This comes in clutch during last minute packing for a vacation or business trip!

You Can Always Add Color (But you Can’t Remove It)

If you want to be more colorful, you can always add splashes of color to a neutral wardrobe. But if all your clothes are bright and colorful, it’s impossible to remove that color for a more subdued look.

Here’s what I mean…

If you’re wearing a navy suit and white dress shirt, and you want to keep things understated (say for a job interview), you can wear a black knit or grey silk tie.

But, if you’re wearing that same suit and shirt to a wedding, you can wear a gold, orange or green tie, along with a colorful pocket square and/or socks. This will add plenty of flare to the outfit with very little effort (or money).

If you don’t own neutral colors, however, this doesn’t work. If you don’t have the navy suit and white dress shirt to build on top of, you can’t choose between blending in and standing out.

For example, if you only own a pink dress shirt or a burgundy suit, your only choice is to be colorful and bold, which isn’t ideal for many situations (interviews, funerals, etc.).

Easy to Control Your Contrast

As a shorter man, I prefer low contrast outfits. In other words, I try to minimize the difference in tone between my top and bottom halves.

• White shirt + black pants = high contrast
• Navy shirt + charcoal pants = low contrast

But that doesn’t mean I always have to wear dark colors, as some style “advice” for shorter men would suggest…

I love wearing light colors, but I want to make sure those outfits are also low contrast.

With a neutral wardrobe, this is easy. If I want to wear dark colors, I’ll go with something like a dark grey shirt and navy pants (or shorts), and I’ll top it off with a navy field jacket, grey topcoat or dark brown leather jacket.

If I want to wear light colors, I have plenty of options:

• Olive chinos (or shorts) + light grey shirt
• Light wash jeans + white shirt
• Tan chinos (or shorts) + white shirt

With these lighter color combos, I’ll usually keep my outerwear light as well. For example, I’ll wear an olive field jacket, tan raincoat or light green windbreaker.

The point is, neutral colors make putting together low contrast outfits very easy, even if you like to wear lighter colors.

Starter Neutral Wardrobe

If you were building a wardrobe from scratch, here’s what you would want to buy first:

• Navy suit
• Grey wool trousers
• Khaki chinos
• Olive chinos
• Dark blue jeans
• Light blue jeans
• Olive chinos shorts
• Khaki chinos shorts
• White dress shirt(s)
• Grey casual button up
• Light blue OCBD
• Black/grey/white t-shirts
• Navy field jacket (or bomber)
• Black/brown leather jacket
• Tan raincoat (or Harrington)
• White leather/canvas sneakers
• Black Oxfords
• Brown brogues
• Grey/tan suede boots

With these 21 items, you’d be covered for pretty much any occasion. But if you wanted to be more unique or really loved a different color, you could easily add more to this collection.

Any of these additions would work with 80% of this wardrobe:

• Pink dress shirt
• Yellow OCBD
• Burgundy bomber
• Red striped t-shirt
• Forest green sweater
• Burnt orange knit tie
• Blue suede chukkas

You get the point. It’s very easy to add personality and individuality to a neutral wardrobe without sacrificing versatility (i.e., without making it harder to put together an outfit or pack for a trip).

Closing Thoughts

I truly believe that all of your basic wardrobe staples should fall into a neutral color palette. This will make it very easy to build a lasting, versatile collection of clothing that’s ready for any occasion and won’t go out of style.

Do you like wearing neutral colors? Let me know in the comments section!