If you searched for this, you’re probably expecting a formula. Wear neutrals. Coordinate, don’t match. Avoid busy patterns. Layer in some texture. Every version of this post says roughly the same thing, and I’m not going to add another one to the pile.

Here’s what I tell families instead: wear what you actually wear.

The problem with a wardrobe formula

A styling formula exists to make everyone look good in the photo. That’s a reasonable goal for a lot of photography, and it’s just not what I’m doing. I’m not building a coordinated image of your family. I’m documenting your actual one, and a family dressed in a palette they’d never choose on their own doesn’t look like your family. It looks like a very nice photo of five strangers who agreed to wear sage green for an afternoon.

If I hand you a color palette, I’m already asking you to perform a version of yourselves before the session even starts. That’s exactly the thing I’m trying to avoid everywhere else: the posed smile, the directed shot list, and clothing shouldn’t be the one place where the rule still applies.

What to actually wear

Whatever you already reach for. The outfit that feels like an ordinary Saturday, not a version of your family dressed for a camera. If you’ve got a favorite sweater you wear every fall, wear it. If your family’s style leans more put-together on a normal day, that’s genuinely fine too; the point was never to dress down, it was to dress like yourselves.

And if your kid wants to wear the dinosaur costume, or the tutu, or the one shirt with the hole in the collar that they refuse to take off, let them. That’s not a wardrobe malfunction I need you to manage around before the session. That’s the actual answer to “what should my kid wear?” Whatever they’d genuinely choose, given the choice, is the right call, custom-made outfit or not.

If you’re still nervous about it

I know “just wear what you normally wear” can feel like harder advice to follow than a clear formula, especially if you’re someone who likes having a rule to check against. A few honest things that tend to help, without turning into a rule themselves: avoid anything with a big logo or text across the front if you’d rather the photo not read as dated in five years, and if everyone’s headed outside, comfortable shoes matter more than anything else on this list. Past that, I promise the outfit matters far less than you think it does. What makes a family photo good has almost nothing to do with what anyone’s wearing.

This is the same philosophy, just applied to wardrobe

If you’ve read anything else I’ve written, you already know the pattern. I don’t ask your kid to smile. I don’t hand you a shot list. And I’m not going to hand you a color palette either. The whole point of a documentary session is that it looks like your life, not a styled version of it, and that starts before I ever pick up the camera.

Ready to talk about your session?

I’d love to hear about your family and what a session with you might look like, wardrobe included.

Get in touch