Color combinations
What colors go with teal?
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
11 combinations below, and none of them were chosen by eye. Each one is generated by moving teal around the OKLCH color space in a specific, named way — a hue rotation for the analogous and complementary pairs, a lightness shift for the tonal ones, a drop in saturation for the ones that would otherwise vibrate. Every reason is written against teal's own measured lightness and hue rather than as a general note about complementary pairs, so the same move transfers to a shade that is not on this page.
Then the part most pages leave out: which of the twelve color types teal actually suits, measured rather than asserted, and a checker you can run against your own season.
11 combinations that work
- Neutral base A near-black carrying teal's own hue of 199° instead of a flat, hueless one, which is what stops the pair reading as two unrelated garments. Teal measures 50% lightness, so this partner sits 38 points away from it — far enough to do its job without the two collapsing together.
- Neutral base The same move in the other direction, to 93% lightness, still tinted with the 199° hue so it belongs to teal rather than merely sitting beside it. Between this and the one above, teal has both ends of an outfit without a second color entering it at all.
- Analogous Teal's neighbor 28° around the wheel, lifted toward the middle of the lightness scale so the two separate. An analogous pair reads as one considered idea rather than two, which makes it the safest thing to put next to teal when you are unsure.
- Analogous Teal's neighbor 32° the other way, taken further from 50% than the one above. The hue stays close enough to teal to be family; the wider lightness gap is what stops the two smearing together at a distance.
- Complementary Teal's true opposite at 19°, desaturated and moved toward mid-lightness before it is allowed near a body. A full-strength complement against moderately saturated teal vibrates at the edges; soften it and the same pairing becomes the one people compliment.
- Split complementary Two colors either side of teal's opposite rather than the opposite itself, at 349° and 49°. Against teal you keep every bit of the contrast and lose the buzz, which is what makes this the most wearable three-piece combination here.
- Tonal Three versions of teal, roughly 19 points of lightness apart, with 50% in the middle. Nothing can clash because nothing is a different color from teal, and from across a room the whole thing reads as a decision rather than an accident.
- Earth neutral A camel-weight warm neutral, pitched to stay visibly separate from mid-depth teal instead of merging with it. Warm neutrals sit under almost anything, and this is the pairing to reach for when teal is the only color you want in the outfit.
- Cool neutral A cool gray, doing the opposite job to the camel above: it cools the pairing down and leaves teal as the only thing in the outfit with a temperature. Useful when teal at 199° is already doing enough work on its own.
- Accent A triadic accent a third of the wheel from teal, at 319°, and strictly at accessory scale. A whole garment in this beside teal is a costume; a bag, a scarf or a shoe in it is what makes an otherwise plain outfit look chosen.
- Denim Listed on its own because it is what teal actually gets worn with. Mid denim is a low-saturation blue sitting at about 51% lightness, close enough to neutral to behave like one against teal whatever the 199° hue is doing.
Each row is an outfit in miniature: the first circle is teal itself, worn nearest your face, and the rest go below it. The outfit builder runs the same logic across your whole palette instead of outward from teal.
Is teal warm or cool?
Cool, and not marginally. The hue of this teal measures 199° in OKLCH, which is well inside the green-to-purple range. Shades sold as teal vary either side of that figure, but they stay inside the cool half of the wheel rather than crossing it.
Which color types it suits
Running teal against all twelve palettes — the same comparison the free checker does — it comes out best for Deep Winter, Cool Winter, Bright Winter, Cool Summer, Soft Summer, Light Summer, Warm Spring, Warm Autumn and Deep Autumn.
Teal is workable for Light Spring, Bright Spring and Soft Autumn, though better worn away from the face than under the chin.
Those verdicts are for #1E6F72 exactly. Shops sell a wide spread of shades under the name teal, and two of them can land on opposite sides of the same verdict — which is what the checker below is for.
Does teal suit you?
Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is stored.
Find out which colors suit you
The checker needs your season. If you do not have one, the scan reads your undertone, depth, contrast and chroma from a single photo and gives you your type plus a preview of your colors, free. The photo is read in your browser and never uploaded.
Questions
What colors go with teal?
11 are set out above, each named for the relationship that produced it, and each measured against teal rather than picked by eye. If you remember one teal pairing and no others, make it the neutral base: teal against a near-black or an off-white built from its own 199° hue is the pairing that never fails.
Is teal warm or cool?
Cool. Cool, and not marginally. The hue of this teal measures 199° in OKLCH, which is well inside the green-to-purple range. Shades sold as teal vary either side of that figure, but they stay inside the cool half of the wheel rather than crossing it.
Who does teal suit?
Run against all twelve palettes, teal comes out best for Deep Winter, Cool Winter, Bright Winter, Cool Summer, Soft Summer, Light Summer, Warm Spring, Warm Autumn, Deep Autumn, and hardest for none of them outright. The teal verdicts come from the same arithmetic the free color checker runs, not from anybody's opinion.
Can I wear teal if it is not my color?
Yes, below the waist. What a season verdict is about is the light bouncing off a garment and up into your face, so teal trousers, teal shoes, a teal bag and a teal coat you take off indoors are all unaffected by it. That leaves most of a teal-containing wardrobe open to you whatever the verdict above says.
Related colors
What goes with olive green · What goes with sage green · What goes with beige
Every color page · Build outfits from your own palette · Check a shade that is not teal · All 12 color types