What to Wear for Fall Family Photos: A Simple Style Guide

One of the first questions - “What should we wear?”

Coordinating two or three people can be tricky. Once you get to five or adding grandparents, adult children, spouses and grandchildren can feel like a full-time job.

The good news? Your family does not need to match to look beautifully put together.

Start With a Color Palette

Instead of choosing one or two colors and asking everyone to wear them, start with a larger, complementary palette.

For a warm, timeless family session, I love combinations like:

Cream • Camel • Rust • Burgundy • Deep Teal • Sage • Chocolate

These colors work beautifully together because you have a mixture of light neutrals, warm earth tones and a few deeper shades. No one needs to wear every color—and you don't need exactly one person assigned to each color.

The idea is to repeat colors subtly throughout the group. For example, Mom might wear a green dress, while someone else wears a cream sweater with chocolate trousers. A child might wear sage with camel, while another family member brings in deep teal or burgundy. When you put everyone together, it feels connected without looking like you tried too hard.

Don't Be Afraid of Light and Dark

One mistake families sometimes make is choosing five to eight outfits that are all approximately the same shade.

Instead, think about balance. If people are wearing cream and camel, bring in deeper colors like burgundy, chocolate and deep teal. Then add a medium tone such as rust or sage. That variation creates dimension in your photographs—and helps keep everyone from blending together. Adding texture is one of my favorite ways to make family outfits photograph beautifully.

Think: Chunky knits. Linen. Corduroy. Suede. Velvet. Cable-knit sweaters. Flowy dresses. Pleated skirts.

Texture adds interest without competing for attention.

A cream cable-knit sweater next to a rust-colored dress and a deep teal sweater will photograph much more beautifully than eight basic solid shirts—even though everyone is technically wearing solid colors.

Patterns Are Great—in Small Doses

You don't have to avoid patterns completely.

A subtle floral dress, small plaid or understated print can actually help tie several colors in your palette together.

The trick with a larger family is to limit patterns to one or two people.

If Mom is wearing a subtle floral dress and one child has a soft plaid shirt, everyone else can pull colors from those pieces.

What I don't recommend is having five different plaids, florals and prints competing with one another. Your eye should go to your family first—not your clothing.

Coordinate The Family Unit

For extended-family sessions, I like to think about outfits in two ways.

First, each smaller family unit should look great on its own. Parents and children will likely be photographed together, grandparents will have portraits together, and there may be photos of siblings or grandchildren.

Then, step back and make sure all of those smaller groups work together as one large family. This is where repeating colors becomes especially helpful.

If one family unit incorporates rust, cream and camel, another might use deep teal, cream and chocolate, while the grandparents wear burgundy, camel and cream.

They aren't matching—but they clearly belong together.

Shoes Matter, Too.

Shoes are easy to forget until the day of your session. Brown leather, tan, camel, taupe and other neutral shoes tend to work beautifully with an earthy palette.

Try to avoid bright athletic sneakers unless they are intentionally part of the look. Shoes don't need to be fancy, but they should feel like they belong with the rest of the outfit.

And most importantly, make sure everyone can comfortably walk in them!

Lay Everything Out Before Your Session

This is probably my favorite styling trick. A few days before your session, lay every single outfit on the bed or floor together.

Include shoes. Then take a quick photo with your phone. Does one shirt suddenly look extremely bright? Is one pattern taking over? Are most people wearing cream while only one person is wearing a dark color? Seeing everything together makes those little imbalances much easier to spot. I sometimes tell clients to squint at the photo. If one outfit still jumps out at you, that's usually the piece worth reconsidering.

Most Importantly, You Should Still Look Like You

A style guide is exactly that—a guide. I don't want your family showing up looking like eight people dressed for a catalog if that isn't who you are. Your children should be comfortable. Your spouse should feel like themselves. And you should feel confident when you look in the mirror.

The goal isn't perfection.

It's creating a wardrobe that allows the people in the photographs to be the most important part. When the colors coordinate, the textures complement one another and everyone feels comfortable, your clothing simply becomes part of the story—leaving the focus exactly where it belongs: On your family and the connection between you.