Let’s be honest: No matter how many pairs of bright, statement-making heels you own, we most often reach for black pumps to finish off a look. There’s safety in the color black, but that doesn’t mean the rest of our colored shoes shouldn’t get an equal amount of attention. Naturally, pairing colored shoes with your look requires a bit more thought and effort than simply throwing on some black shoes.

Today, I’m bringing you the ultimate guide on what to wear with colored shoes in hopes of helping you (and ourselves) give those purple, green, blue, and red shoes some airtime. Before you start, there are a few rules of thumb to remember:

1. If your outfit has a color in it, your shoes can be any shade of that color.

2. Black, beige, and gray shoes go with everything.

3. You can never go wrong with head-to-toe monochrome.

Now that we’ve laid those basic ground rules, let’s dive into the colors we recommend wearing with every different shoe color under the sun. Have a pair of pink heels sitting in your closet that have yet to see the light of day? We’ve got a few ideas. Looking to maximize the wear you get out of your favorite pair of silver sandals? Prepare to be inspired. Simply keep reading to see the best colors to wear with every color shoe, and shop our shoe picks while you're at it.

Blue shoes go best with yellow, neutrals, brown, white, and green.

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(Image credit: Getty Images/Claudio Lavenia)

Gold shoes go best with black, red, white, emerald, blue, and burgundy.

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(Image credit: Getty Images/Daniel Zuchnik)

Green shoes go best with brown, black, blue, green, neutrals, and yellow.

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(Image credit: Getty Images/Edward Berthelot)

Orange shoes go best with blue, green, white, earth tones, red, and yellow.

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(Image credit: Getty Images/Christian Vierig)

Purple shoes go best with neutrals, black, navy, pink, and green.

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(Image credit: Getty Images/Claudio Lavenia)

Red shoes go best with pink, orange, green, black, white, neutrals, and navy blue.

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(Image credit: Getty Images/Christian Vierig)

Yellow shoes go best with any shade of blue, black and white, and green.

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(Image credit: Getty Images/Edward Berthelot)

Silver shoes go best with white, red, purple, neutrals, indigo, and black.

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(Image credit: Getty Images/Claudio Lavenia)

Next, discover the eight summer trends I have sitting in my shopping cart right now.

Associate Director, Special Projects

Kristen Nichols is the Associate Director, Special Projects at Who What Wear with over a decade of experience in fashion, editorial, and publishing. She oversees luxury content and wedding features, and covers fashion within the luxury market, runway reporting, shopping features, trends, and interviews with leading industry experts. She also contributes to podcast recordings, social media, and branded content initiatives. Kristen has worked with brands including Prada, Chanel, MyTheresa, and Luisa Via Roma, and rising designers such as Refine and Tove, and her style has been featured in publications including Vogue.com, Vogue France, WWD, and the CFDA. Before Who What Wear, Kristen began her career at Rodarte, where she worked on assistant styling, photo shoots, and runway shows, and at Allure, where she moved into print and digital editorial. She graduated from the University of Southern California, where she studied art history and business, and currently lives in New York.