Abstract
The color of apparels has the close interdependency on the skin colors of the wearers. This study was carried out to group the skin colors of Korean males into several similar skin colors and to analyze their preference colors. The skin colors were measured quantitatively and classified into several clusters that has similar hue, value and chroma with Munsell color system that is internationally used to communicate the colors. Sample size was 420 Korean males. With color spectrometer, JX-777, 4 points of the body were measured. All subjects had been shown with 40 color chips and answered their preference colors. Data were analysed by K-means Cluster analysis, Duncan test, Frequency and Chi square test using SPSS WIN 10 statistical package. Findings were as follows: 1. The skin colors of Korean males were mixed with skin colors of YR, R, and Y. 2. 420 subjects who have YR color were clustered in 3 kinds of skin color groups. 3. The average face color of total subjects was 4.81YR 5.91/4.97 in Munsell color system, 60.74 in L value, 13.71 in a value, 24.54 in b value. 136 observations out of 420 subjects were composed of Type 1: 4.50YR 6.35/4.87 and 192 observations were composed of Type 2: 4.62YR 5.86/5.12 and 92 observations were composed of Type 3: 5.67YR 5.37/4.79. 4. The average skin color of total 420 subjects was 6.26YR 6.07/4.41 and 62.33 in L value, 10.64 in a value, 23.48 in b value. The average skin color of Type 1 was 6.27YR 6.44/4.27 and of Type 2 was 6.15YR 5.91/4.49 and of Type 3 was 6.49YR 5.84/4.43 respectively. 5. 3 groups showed that the most preference color of sport$.$casual was 2.5Y 8/16 and 7.5PB 4/16 and the most preference color to their skins was 7.5PB 4/16 and 7.5YR 7/16.
