About Joy Overstreet

Joy Overstreet, personal color analyst

I always loved color. But that didn’t mean I had a clue about wearing it. 

The color-clueless Joy Imboden wearing an orange maternity tent dress. In 1971 I was rotundly 8 months pregnant. To start fresh with a new post-pregnancy wardrobe, I “had my colors done” by personal color analyst Ron Sackman at Personal Style Counselors in Oakland, CA. His eyeballs must have hurt when I arrived in a bright orange maternity tent (made by ME, emblazoned with a white and black expando panel down the front).

The session was like a lengthy optometrist appointment. Which color swatch was better? 1 or 2? 2 or 3? 1 or 3?  The end result was a beautiful harmonious palette of cool muted colors – soft blues, greens and purples. No orange. No white. Not even black. No loud swirls. I went home and cried.

But once I began building a wardrobe in my softer colors, people started telling me how great I looked (instead of liking my dress). My closet looked harmonious instead of random, and choosing what to wear no longer stressed me out.

That palette expanded my color sense exponentially. Since 2002 I’ve been using color along with my feng shui skills at Joyful Spaces to help my clients bring their homes to harmonious life.

Palettes for People I wanted most of all to offer my clients the kind of transformative color analysis service I’d gotten so long ago, but it required intensive training. In 2014 I found Kamova Institute of Color in Cupertino, CA, and trained as a personal color analyst in the sophisticated Caygill system. Since then I’ve created hundreds of custom palettes for clients in the Portland/Vancouver metro area, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Nashville. Others have come in from as far away as Alaska, Boston and Florida.

Writing, Speaking, Teaching:

The Cherry Pie Paradox: The Surprising Path to Diet Freedom and Lasting Weight Loss, by Joy Imboden Overstreet MPH, creator of the original Thin Within workshops in 1975I’ve had a long prior career as a health educator, teacher, and nationally published writer. In 1975 I created the Thin Within workshops, a diet-free process that long preceded “intuitive eating.” My book, The Cherry Pie Paradox: the Surprising Path to Diet Freedom and Lasting Weight Loss, which describes this transformational process, came out in September 2021. Details and more about my writing on my author website, joyoverstreet.com, where you can also download the juicy first chapter.

I have a masters degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley and am a Distinguished Toastmaster as well. I’ve taught classes at Chabot College, The American Heart Association, The American Lung Association, and Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA. Before the pandemic I taught classes at Clark College in Vancouver WA.

Contact me here:

"Alive! with Joy" is an eclectic mix of inspiration, design and culture, plus photos. Always thought provoking.

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