Seasonal Color Theory
Seasonal Color Theory expresses that every person falls into one of four categories based on the natural colors found on their body. Those four categories were named: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Now, let’s forget for a moment the actual temperature of the weather during the seasons and looking at them from a color standpoint only. Conversely, winter and Summer are “cool” seasons while Spring and Autumn are considered to be “warm” seasons. The cool season colors are derived from the standard color wheel. The warm season colors are derived from the enriched or double primary color wheel.
How Are Colors Divided into Seasons?
The “Cool” Seasons
Summer’s color fan displays tints of the standard color wheel. If you remember from an one of my color theory posts, tints are created by adding white to them. These colors in particular are referred to as pastels. They possess a light and airy quality.
Winter’s colors are shades which are created by adding black. While many of these colors have a high value and are sometimes referred to as being “deep”, Winter also has some icy pastels as well. These are created by adding just a little white, but not to the extent of a summer color. Because colors exist on a spectrum, not all colors are easily classified as one or the other. As a result, more than one season may look good in the color. Winter’s colors have a sort of serious/ sophisticated feel to them.
Sidenote: I say “may look good” because even within seasonal color analysis there are not absolutes. Each one of us is still different. There may be some colors in your palette that don’t look as good on you as others. We’ll talk more about why this is when we talk about seasonal blends.
The “Warm” Seasons
Spring‘s colors are the full intensity colors of the Enriched color wheel. Because of this, the colors take on a bright and cheerful identity.
Autumn’s colors come from the Enriched color wheel. Most of the colors are muted by adding a little bit of its complement to lower the saturation of the color. In other words, the colors exude a very earthy feel.
Visit my seasonal specific Pinterest boards: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter for additional examples.
Take a peek into your own closet, which season’s colors do you have the most of?
Seasonal Blends
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “How can all the people in the world be divided into only 4 categories?” Each category splits into four sub-categories called blends. Think about seasonal color as a circle and that circle contains 4 quadrants. Each quadrant represents one of the seasons— Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. To enumerate, each person falls somewhere in that circle. Some fall right in the middle of the arch of their season. This person is an absolute of their season. Others fall closer to the border of seasons. The season that they are close to is their blend. Conversely, others may fall closer to the center of the circle and have more than one blend.
Example
Let me give you a real life example. I am an autumn. I have warm underton
Let me give you a real-life example. I am an autumn. I have warm undertones in my skin, hair and eyes. My natural hair color as an adult is dark golden brown, my over-all eye coloring is brown. I have rust and gold colored lines in my iris and a really dark, almost black ring around my iris. I can’t tell if it’s a dark charcoal, dark navy or dark brown. My natural complexion tone borders on the line between fair and medium.
When I was a child and when I bleached my hair, I appeared to be more of an autumn blended with summer. The color palette I chose my colors from didn’t change (I was and will always be an Autumn), but it changed which end of the value spectrum I looked better in. With lighter hair, I had a softer, less contrasting look. Because or that, I looked better in the Autumn-Summer blend colors which also have less contrast.
Keeping my hair its natural color creates more of a contrast with my skin tone, thus needing more contrast with my color selections. I wear deep autumn colors best.
With my natural coloring, my hair and eyes have more contrast with my skin tone, thus needing more contrast with my color selections— the autumn colors with some black added to shade them to give them a deep tone.
Here is an example of a color draping of myself. The colors in the photo below are in the order of Summer–>Spring–>Autumn–>Winter. You can see that Autumn is my best color, but Winter’s is pretty good too, thus confirming my Autumn season with a strong blend of Winter.
Picking the Best Colors from You Palette
Each color palette contains 15 colors that look universally fantastic on everyone in that season. Because of this, these are the colors that are used in draping during a color analysis. You also may be able to wear colors from your secondary or blended season well, but the color from your dominant season will look the best.
A blend expresses itself when a person mimics another season . In the same way, the person will want to mimic the season’s color selection as well. For example, a blend with spring will wear the brighter colors of their own palette, summer- the lighter pastel like colors, autumn- the lower saturation or earthier colors and winter- the deeper colors or those shaded with black.
At first glance, a person may actually appear to be their blend, but draping reveals a different season is their dominant one. That’s why it’s so important to do a draping. If you’d like to schedule a draping session, please visit my services page to book a color consultation. However, if that’s not an option for you, sign up for my FREE Color Course instead.
Already know your season or blend? Use the links below to go to your season specific page.