Family Beach Portraits: What to Wear

Even with the best camera and lens, your family beach portraits might not look fantastic and unique if you don’t know the right outfit to wear. The following family beach portraits: what to wear guide will help you choose an outfit color that blends with the beach environment.

Family Beach Portraits: What to Wear

One of the best ways to keep memories of a family beach visit is to capture some beach portraits. However, what you wear in these photos is what will help you remember the fantastic moments you had on the beach.

The best way to connect your outfit with the beach mood is to choose soft colors that blend well with the warm summer evenings. Keeping in mind that you will want all your shots to have a unique and color-coordinated outfit, you need a wide range of outfit color ideas.

Whether you spend two days or a week on the beach, the following are some of the best outfit ideas and color combinations for beach portraits that can make every single shot unique and outstanding.

White and Blue Outfit

If you want an outfit that can help rekindle the beach visit memories by mimicking the beach environment, it is a white and blue outfit. In most cases, the background of your beach portraits will be either the bluish ocean or the blue sky.

The blue shades also make the outfit blend well with any vegetation around the beach. On the other hand, the white makes the outfit blend well with the white beach sand, making the photo look sophisticated.

Gray and White Outfit

Wearing an outfit of gray and white can be a great idea, especially if the beach sand is not pure white and you want a color that can blend with the sand color. In most cases, you will need good contrast when capturing the portraits in broad daylight with a background of pure white sand.

Gray can help to give your photos a better contrast. On the other hand, white blends well with the bluish ocean water, especially during early mornings when the sun is rising or evening when the sun is setting, and the sun’s rays are beaming on you.

Since gray is classic and sophisticated, it will make the photos look gorgeous and timeless. For instance, wearing a white maxi dress with a gray knitted cardigan can make the photo fascinating.

All White Outfit

You can run out of color-coordination ideas and lack a color combination that can blend with the beach mood, especially if you have spent many days on the beach and tried other color combinations.

An all-white outfit such as white linen pants, white denim or white polo shirts for guys, or white cotton dresses for ladies can make your beach family photo look crisp. In most cases, these colors will look amazing if you shoot the portraits early in the morning or late in the afternoon without strong ambient lighting.

Although an all-white outfit may look formal, the portraits can be outstanding, with the white outfit reflecting the light of the soft color palette of the beach. An all-white outfit can also blend well with the shallow beach waters.

Tan and Navy Outfit

Adding tones of blue in your family outfit can help make the photos rhyme with the bluish background of the ocean. Although you can use any blue shade, the navy blue shade looks exceptionally good, especially when combined with a neutral color.

For instance, combining navy blue with a solid tan or khaki color will prevent much contrast and make the photos look great. Combining the navy blue color with a pattern, especially for the guys, can also make the photo unique.

Tan and White Outfit

If you’re a large family and you have spent several days on the beach, you can break the monotony of the standard color matching by having some of the family members wear an outfit that combines tan and white.

Keep in mind that a tan and white outfit might not look great when everyone wears it in the family photo, like when select family members wear it.

For instance, you can have the girls in the family photo wear a combination of tan and white, with the rest of the family members wearing other color combinations.

Blue and Pink Outfit

Another wonderful outfit to wear for beach portraits, especially when you are relaxing on the beach sand during late afternoons with the sun rays beaming on you, is a combination of blue and pink. Blue and pink are one of the few color combinations that look fascinating to all people, whether children, women, or men.

For instance, the portrait can look great with the girls and ladies wearing blue or pink seersucker dresses and the boys and men wearing blue bottoms and salmon or pink polos.

White and Pink Outfit

Although an outfit that combines white and pink might seem traditional, it’s a wonderful outfit that makes the family portraits glowing, especially if shot in the early mornings during sunrise.

In most cases, this outfit suits small families, with the girls and ladies wearing pink and boys and men wearing white. However, it’s advisable to go for soft pink to prevent the outfit from being overly shouting.

Important Outfit Tips When Shooting Family Beach Portraits 

Even after picking the best color combination for your family beach photography outfits, the photos might not look as fascinating and high-quality as you expect if you don’t consider the following tips.

• Pay attention to the photoshoot time to ensure the color tone and saturation blend well with your outfit. You can also adjust your camera settings to enhance the blending.
• If you have any tan lines, avoid wearing thin straps or strapless tops as the tan lines can be prominent in the sun.
• Fit the clothes before the shoot to ensure the color tone and fitting look good on you. Typically, you don’t want to look like the clothes are oversized or undersized.
• For ladies, it’s not advisable to wear too buggy dresses as they can blow in case of wind. Usually, the movement of the dress will lead to motion blur, especially when shooting in the late afternoon with slower shutter speeds, making the photo blurred and of low quality.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thoughts

The family beach portraits: what to wear guide reveals many color combinations that can make an outfit blend with the beach environment when taking family beach portraits. Keeping in mind that you’ll have a white beach background and a bluish ocean background, many color combinations involve white and blue shades.