Seasonal color analysis

Seasonal color analysis matches colors to your natural coloring using three traits: temperature (warm or cool), depth (light or deep) and clarity (soft or clear). The 12 seasons are the combinations of those traits, each named for the trait that leads.

The 12-season wheel

Every season leads with one trait and leans on a second. Neighbors on the wheel share a trait: Soft Autumn and Soft Summer are both soft, Soft Autumn and Warm Autumn both lean warm. Tap or focus a season to see its colors.

Tap a seasonEach season sits between the two it shares a trait with. Opposite sides of the wheel differ on everything.

The three traits

Trait	The two ends	What shows it
Temperature	Warm (golden, yellow-based) or cool (blue-based, rosy)	Gold or silver, cream or white, green or blue veins
Depth	Light or deep	Hair, eye and skin depth together
Clarity	Clear (bright, high contrast) or soft (muted, blended)	How bright colors wear you and how much contrast your features have

Most people are clearly one way on one trait and less clear on the others. That leading trait names the season: a Light Spring is light first and warm second, a Deep Winter is deep first and cool second. The four "true" seasons, one in the middle of each family (Warm Spring, Cool Summer, Warm Autumn, True Winter), lead with temperature and lean on clarity.

The four families

Spring is warm and clear: colors with yellow in them, bright enough to look fresh. Summer is cool and soft: blue-based colors with gray mixed in. Autumn is warm and soft: earthy, golden, muted colors. Winter is cool and clear: icy, saturated colors and high contrast.

How to test yourself

Use daylight. Stand by a window, no makeup, hair pulled back. Lamps and phone cameras shift skin color.
Temperature first. Hold gold and then silver at your face, then cream and then optic white paper. Warm coloring glows with gold and cream; cool coloring looks clearer with silver and white.
Then clarity. Hold a bright color (cobalt, hot pink) and a muted one (sage, dusty rose). If the bright one shows before your face does, you are on the soft side.
Then depth. Compare black with a mid gray or camel. Black that looks natural points deep; black that looks heavy points light or soft.
Or take the quiz. The 14 questions cover these checks and score them for you, with the weights published on How the quiz works.

Where the system comes from

The idea that the colors a person likes reflect their own coloring goes back to the painter Johannes Itten, who taught at the Bauhaus and called them "subjective colors". Carole Jackson's book Color Me Beautiful (1980) made the four-season version popular: Winters and Summers have blue undertones, Springs and Autumns yellow ones.

The 12-season system grew out of Kathryn Kalisz's Sci\ART method, which placed each person on three scales instead of in one box: hue (warm to cool), value (light to dark) and chroma (soft to bright). Those are the three traits above, and most 12-season systems in use today descend from her work.

Questions people ask

What is seasonal color analysis?

A way of matching clothing, makeup and hair colors to your natural coloring. It sorts coloring by three traits (warm or cool, light or deep, soft or clear) and names the combinations after the seasons.

How do I find my color season?

Look at your coloring in daylight and compare test colors at your face, or answer the 14-question quiz, which asks about the same things and scores them on the three traits.

What are the 12 color seasons?

Light Spring, Warm Spring, Bright Spring, Bright Winter, True Winter, Deep Winter, Deep Autumn, Warm Autumn, Soft Autumn, Soft Summer, Cool Summer and Light Summer.

What is the difference between 4-season and 12-season color analysis?

The four-season system has one palette per season. The 12-season system splits each season into three by its strongest trait, so someone who is mostly soft and only slightly warm gets Soft Autumn instead of a general Autumn palette.

Is seasonal color analysis worth it?

It is most useful as a shopping filter: a short list of colors that flatter you saves buying things you never wear. Use the result as a guide and check it against a mirror in daylight.