Seasonal color analysis: 12 color seasons and undertone test

Seasonal color analysis is a styling method that uses your natural skin, hair and eye coloring to work out which colors look best next to your face. The most common version sorts people into spring, summer, autumn and winter, then splits those into 12 color seasons. It is a system stylists built from experience, not a dermatology exam, and research supports only part of it.

What is seasonal color analysis? A system for choosing the colors nearest your face

Seasonal color analysis, also called personal color analysis, is a color-recommendation system: it first reads the traits of your natural coloring, then suggests which colors to use in the things closest to your face, such as tops, scarves, lipstick and hair color.

You will see many names for it: personal color analysis, color analysis, color season. They describe roughly the same thing. The differences lie in how many types a studio uses, which set of fabric drapes it holds and what it calls each season.

Its theoretical roots are often traced to the color contrasts described by the color theorist Johannes Itten, especially warm-cool contrast and contrast of saturation; the English edition of Itten’s The Art of Color appeared in 1961. Sorting people into spring, summer, autumn and winter became popular after Carole Jackson published Color Me Beautiful in 1980 (as summarized by Perrett and Sprengelmeyer, 2021). In recent years Korean and Japanese beauty content has talked about it a lot, and studios offering draping sessions have spread widely.

It is not the same as the “color psychology quizzes” or “color personality tests” online. Those ask which colors you like and infer personality; seasonal color analysis ignores what you like and looks only at which colors, placed next to your face, make a better first impression. For personality, try the Big Five guide or the 16 personality types guide.

How are the four color seasons divided? Three dials: undertone, depth and clarity

The four seasons weigh three dials at once (undertone, depth and clarity), and warm versus cool is only one of them. Two people can both be cool-toned, and one suits black, white and royal blue while the other suits gray-blue and lavender.

The three dials come from the color system proposed in 1905 by the American art teacher Albert Munsell, who split color into three properties: hue, value and chroma. Seasonal color analysis applies the same logic to people:

• Undertone: what shows through the skin, leaning pink or blue (cool) or leaning apricot or golden (warm).
• Depth: whether hair, skin and eyes overall lean light or deep.
• Clarity: whether the whole person looks clear and vivid, or soft and muted, as if seen through a thin haze. Some studios call this saturation.

The table already shows what warm-versus-cool alone misses. Summer and winter are both cool; the difference is that summer is soft and winter is vivid. Spring and autumn are both warm; spring is clear and autumn is rich. Two coworkers with dark hair and dark eyes, one looking sharp in all black and the other looking as if they worked three late nights in a row, often differ in clarity and contrast, not temperature.

How do you tell cool skin from warm skin? Yellow skin is not the same as warm skin

Cool and warm describe the color that shows from beneath the skin, which is separate from whether skin looks yellow or pale, and since many people’s skin has some yellow in it, the reasoning “I look yellow, so I must be warm” often fails.

Xiao and colleagues (2016) measured skin with a spectrophotometer in four groups (Caucasian, Chinese, Kurdish and Thai) and found the clearest difference between groups was in yellowness: Thai skin averaged the most yellow, Caucasian the least, and Chinese in between, while facial redness was similar across groups. Since yellowness is common and varies by group, “I look yellow” says little about being warm. What matters is what shows through on the cheeks and lips: pink or apricot.

Plenty of self-test methods circulate, and their reliability varies a lot:

Blood is red, so why do veins look blue? Kienle and colleagues (1996) used experiments and computer simulation to show that the color of a vein depends on how skin scatters and absorbs light of different wavelengths, on blood oxygenation, on the width and depth of the vein and on how the eye interprets it. So the color a vein appears changes with depth, skin condition and current light. As a clue for warm or cool, treat it as weak evidence at best.

One more common muddle is “olive” skin, the slightly gray-green, hazy look. Some articles file it as warm and others as neutral. Our quiz counts an olive, gray-green haze on the soft end of clarity and adds no cool or warm, because it reads more as the overall color being grayed down a little.

In our Seasonal Color Analysis Quiz, 13 questions feed the undertone dial, and the wrist-vein question makes up only 10% of the undertone score range; veins, gold versus silver and reaction to sun together make up just 30%. In one sample set of answers, changing only the vein question from “bluish” to “greenish” moves the undertone score from 38 to 49 (0 is coolest and 100 is warmest). A verdict from any single trick would not hold up even in the scoring.

Testing at home: a 15-minute routine by a window

To judge your own color season, fix the light first: daytime natural light by a window, a bare face, the same spot, and one set of colors compared at a time.

The 2015 “blue and black or white and gold” dress photo is a good example of light shaping judgment. In a commentary in Current Biology, Brainard and Hurlbert (2015) summarized several experiments and suggested that the large differences between viewers may come from the mechanism the brain normally uses to keep object colors stable: the brain automatically discounts the effect of the light source, and when the lighting in a photo is ambiguous, each person discounts in a different direction and sees different colors. Department-store counter lighting, warm bulbs in a bar and a phone’s beauty filter and auto white balance all “correct” the image for you first. Judging your season there is like asking a friend in tinted glasses to look at you.

Everything you need is in your closet:

1. Time and place: daytime, by a window but out of direct sun, with the room lights off.
2. Face and hair: a bare face or just sunscreen, colored contacts out; if your hair is dyed, wrap it in a white towel.
3. Four sets to compare: a pure white and a cream top; a black and a navy (or charcoal) top; one vivid and one same-color-but-grayed piece; a gold and a silver piece of jewelry, or gold and silver wrapping paper if you have none.
4. Photograph: with the phone’s back camera and beauty filters off, hold each set under your chin in turn and take a photo of each, keeping both you and the phone still.

Each set has a job: white against cream shows undertone, black against navy shows depth, vivid against grayed shows clarity, and gold against silver confirms undertone once more.

When you look at the photos, do not ask which one looks nicer; that question is too easily swayed by taste. Look at whether dark circles and the shadows around the mouth have softened, whether lips and cheeks have color, and whether the eye goes to your face or to the clothing first. Stephen and colleagues (2009) had participants adjust the skin color of face photos and found people raised the blood color in the face, especially oxygenated redness, to make it look healthier; the everyday “good color” is roughly that flush.

Writing the four results down before you take the quiz beats going by impression, because several questions ask about reactions you have actually compared, such as which white suits you and how you look in all black.

What are the 12 color seasons? Four seasons split into six leading traits

The 12 seasons split each of the four seasons into three types, named for your most obvious trait: Light, Deep, Bright, Soft, or True (a pure warm or cool), with a secondary lean toward warm or cool.

For example, someone led by “light” is Light Spring if leaning warm and Light Summer if leaning cool; someone led by “soft” is Soft Autumn if leaning warm and Soft Summer if leaning cool. Names vary by system: True Spring may be called Warm Spring elsewhere, and Bright Spring goes by Clear Spring; 16-type systems usually add face shape and style. The table uses the names from our quiz:

A sister season shares the leading trait and differs only on another dial, so the palettes can be borrowed. Soft Autumn and Soft Summer are both led by softness, one warm and one cool, and in-between shades such as oatmeal and dusty rose look good on both.

Our Seasonal Color Analysis Quiz has 21 questions: 15 ask you to describe your skin, hair, eyes and clothing experience, and 6 are agreement scales. Each option adds or subtracts points on three dials, converted to a 0 to 100 scale where 50 means no clear lean, and then the scoring checks which season’s prototype your three scores sit closest to.

Among the 12 prototypes, the closest pair is Bright Winter and True Winter, only about 19 points apart when the three dials are put together as a straight-line distance; the farthest pair is Deep Autumn and Light Summer, about 70 points apart. Neighboring seasons swap easily, so the report lists both a second-closest season and the one you are most likely to be mistaken for. If you hesitate between two seasons, begin with the colors they share, which is rarely a mistake.

How accurate is seasonal color analysis? Research backs the broad idea; the fine splits are unvalidated

Current research supports the broad idea that skin tone affects which clothing colors look harmonious, but there is no evidence yet that splits like 12 seasons or 16 types are accurate.

Perrett and Sprengelmeyer (2021) of the University of St Andrews first reviewed earlier work: the categories stylists use have no scientific definition, and the colors recommended differ from one system to another. Two earlier studies they cite point the same way. Collin (1986) compared the advice of 11 color consultants and found little agreement, and Francis and Evans (1988) had a model classed as a spring type wear different outfits while people rated whether she seemed suitable for hiring, concluding that the darkness of the clothing mattered more than the hue (both cited via Perrett & Sprengelmeyer, 2021).

They then ran two experiments of their own, asking 96 and 75 observers to choose clothing colors for photos of 12 women, six with fair skin and six more deeply tanned. The results were consistent: people tended to assign blue tones to fair faces and orange-red tones to tanned faces, and in the first experiment 77% of people chose warmer, yellower colors for tanned faces than for fair ones.

The authors list their own limits: the photos were of 12 young white women, the clothing was flat color patches, and it is unknown whether results carry over to other ages, genders and ethnic groups. It also compared skin depth, meaning melanin, not the “undertone” stylists talk about. What it supports is that there are matching rules between skin tone and clothing color. It cannot yet show who is a Soft Summer or a True Summer, or be applied directly to any given skin tone.

Why do different studios and apps give different seasons? The usual reasons:

• Different systems: whether there are 4, 8, 12 or 16 types, and their names and boundaries, are each brand’s own choice.
• Different lighting: shop lighting, photo white balance and screens all shift color.
• You sit between two seasons: neighboring seasons are close on all three dials.
• Your current state: a fresh tan, new hair color or makeup pushes the judgment a little.

A healthier use is to treat your season as a narrowing tool. It helps pick a dozen shades worth trying from a whole wall of colors; which piece looks good is still decided by wearing it and looking in natural light.

After you know your season: change three things near your face first

Knowing your season does not mean emptying your closet; changing the things closest to your face (white, black and lip color) shows the most difference for the least money.

• Swap the white. Pure white, cream, oatmeal: pick the one that made your dark circles look lighter in the comparison. For people who wear a white shirt several days a week, the right white is the best return.
• Swap the black. If all black makes you look tired, wear navy, charcoal or dark brown on top and move black to pants and shoes.
• Swap the lip color. Smallest area, biggest change. When undecided, compare two shades by a window and pick the one that makes your teeth look whiter and your lips livelier.

Places where you cannot choose the color have fixes too. For a bridesmaid dress, a work uniform or a graduation gown, patch it with small items near the face: earrings in your gold or silver, a bit of your white showing at the neckline, a lipstick in your shade. If you commute by bike or scooter, a summer tan followed by a winter fade can shift your depth and contrast; in Perrett and Sprengelmeyer’s experiments observers chose more orange-red clothing for tanned faces, so it makes sense to compare again after a season change.

You can still wear colors you love. Seasonal color analysis answers what makes the best first impression next to your face, and it has no say over what you may wear. Put a shade you love that does not suit you on pants, a skirt, a bag or shoes, and you get both. If you notice that when you pick clothes you mostly imagine whether other people will say it looks good, that may be worth more attention than any season, and the people-pleaser guide covers it.

When is it worth going to a professional?

• Self-tests and online quizzes keep swinging between two seasons, and you will actually use the result, for example to replace much of your wardrobe or to plan a hair color. One draping session can help. Before booking, ask how many types the system uses, what light the session is done under and whether you get a swatch card; these tell you more about quality than price.
• Your skin color changes noticeably in a short time for no clear reason, for example turning yellow overall or developing patches. That is a reason to see a doctor, not to change your season.
• Looking in the mirror or choosing clothes often makes you anxious enough to affect going out, working or socializing. A licensed therapist can help; this kind of distress can be worked on.

For a starting point, take the Seasonal Color Analysis Quiz, then carry the palette from your report to a window and compare it in person.