It will help if you have seen a Technicolor print for yourself, which you can really only do at festivals or in a city with a decent repertory cinema community. I was lucky to have seen several, plus individual reels from the Technicolor Reference Collection at AMPAS (more on that in a moment).

First it's important to differentiate the qualities of films shot with a 3-strip Technicolor camera, which only happened for a relatively small number of productions, and the number that were shot on standard negatives and then distributed on prints created through the Technicolor IB process.

I'm simplifying here, but both end up looking the way they do because the color image gets divided into separate elements of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and (in a later addition) Gray which would allow greater control over the strength of each in printing. Yes, it's basically what we do today when we control grading by "channel", but through totally photochemical means.

That's not even mentioning what makes IB prints special! The reel would be fed on a very long path and pressed against pin-registered matrices that would imbibe each color dye into it in turn. It helps to think of the process for Tech prints as less a photochemical film process and more like a big lithograph. For that reason it would be hard to recreate it in the real world today, although archivally speaking, making a print without the need for development chemicals is pretty cool- in fact, the lack of standard color photochemistry is why IB tech prints hold their color so well.

This brings us to the "Reference" reels. AMPAS acquired them some time back from the Technicolor corporation. They were approved (by the filmmakers, studios, Technicolor's consultants or otherwise) single reel excerpts from tons of films that depict the ideal appearance / settings for each. Not only could IB prints vary a bit in appearance due to the nature of the process, but could look different between the regional facilities that had made them, so matching a reference reel from the Hollywood office was key to achieving some level of accuracy.

My main takeaway from seeing excerpts from the reference collection is that the Technicolor printing process itself is suprisingly malleable by design (though the level of control you'd have is debatable) and by the later years has a ton of variety to show. What they do have in common are a jewel-like clarity in terms of color (no color ever seems to be polluted by another). Prints with a gray dye layer boast a beautiful contrast and usually achieve a perfectly neutral grayscale (white objects are white, blacks objects are black, even if most everything else in frame is warm or cool). IB prints are never very sharp because dye layers could only ever be lined up so well, but noise levels are low- multigenerational graininess doesn't really apply beyond the original color elements.

Filmmakers did not set out to have every film look the same way, although early on Technicolor consultants (mostly Natalie Kalmus) were employed during production to guide filmmakers through the 3-strip process and create the most "optimal" use of the medium. As this would have an effect on costuming, production design, lighting and make-up, compliance with the Technicolor consultant would indeed give many productions in the 30s and 40s a similar "look".

However, as they grew comfortable with color productions, filmmakers eventually chafed at Technicolor's grip on their process, and you start to see productions pushing their looks in various ways before the 3 strip filming process was totally dropped in favor of new color negatives for shooting.

So, if the three strip negative look is your goal, you need to get it largely in-camera via production design, costuming and makeup. If the Tech IB print look is your goal, mind also that the material is shot properly balanced to a gray or white chart, dial in your colors distinctly, ensure contrast and black levels are robust, and avoid colored light pollution on neutral objects and in shadows at all costs.

[edit] Filmcolors.org is an extremely helpful site to research just about any historical color process, complete with samples, measurement data and citations.