Family Picture Outfits

December 15, 2021

Family pictures are always fun to look back on. Having them professionally done provides such beautiful memories. What’s not always so fun? Picking out what everyone is going to wear. In this post I’m going to be sharing tips and tricks when picking family picture outfits. These particular family photos were shot in Charleston, SC by the amazing Angela Kinard of Carolina Rain Photography. I highly recommend her if you’re looking!

Tips and Tricks

These few tips and tricks for family picture outfits will make your job so much simpler. These are what I use when picking out my family’s outfits. Hopefully they will help you also.

First and foremost, think about when (time of day and time of year) and where you’re having the pictures taken. Is it a park, cityscape, beach, etc. Also, is the weather going to be cold, hot, etc. This bit of info will guide you to pick colors and what type of clothes.
Start with one outfit. For this session with Carolina Rain Photography, I started with my daughter’s dress. I knew I wanted her to wear that specific item, so I built the rest of the outfits around that.
Piggybacking off the previous point is how I’ll get to the next step. After knowing the first outfit, I chose a color palette based off that. Since her dress is a neutral floral print, I went with neutral-earthy tones. From that I had a color palette of 4 colors.
DON’T dress in matching outfits. Thankfully this trend has gone out the window. You want the outfits to compliment each other, but not match exactly.
Don’t be afraid of patterns and different textures. If done correctly, they can make the picture pop.
Make sure you’re comfortable in your outfits. It will show in the pictures if you aren’t feeling your outfit.

Color Palette Options

I have put together a few color palette options for family picture outfits. The palette I used for my family’s pictures is the first one you see.

Hopefully this helped

The intention of this post is to help anyone struggling with what to wear for family pictures. Hopefully these few tips and tricks were insightful and can guide you in the right direction. I want to end this post with showing how I used the color palette above to bring our family picture outfits to life. Angela was a huge help in guiding me too. So if you’re hiring a photographer, definitely ask their opinion!