True Summer color palette

Lip

• Cool raspberry
• Rose
• Soft pink

Blush

• Cool rose
• Dusty pink
• Mauve

What colors are in the True Summer color palette?

20 wearable colors, listed at the top of this page with their hex codes, plus 5 neutrals to build a wardrobe around. You do not need all of them, most people live in six or seven, and the neutrals do the heavy lifting.

What is the True Summer color season?

True Summer is one of the twelve seasonal color types. It is strongly cool, moderately light and moderately soft. In practice that means cool raspberry, rose red and soft rose sit comfortably on you, while the colors in the avoid list make you look tired. Temperature is the dominant axis here: get the warm-versus-cool call right and everything else follows. (Undertone is what the 12-tone system calls this season's primary characteristic.)

How do I know if I'm a True Summer?

Three checks. Cool with a pink, rosy or blue-ish cast; burns before it tans. Ash blonde to ash or cool medium brown, never golden. Cool blue, gray-blue, gray-green, or soft cool hazel. Contrast is the fourth: low to medium, and always gentle rather than crisp. If two of those four describe you, True Summer is very likely your season, our free analysis scores all twelve and tells you how close the runners-up are.

What are the worst colors for a True Summer?

The clearest ones to drop are orange, golden yellow and black. The single most jarring color for a purely cool palette. Full explanations for each are on the colors-to-avoid page.

Am I a True Summer or a Light Summer?

They are neighbors, which is exactly why they get confused. The deciding axis is depth: True Summer is the deep one and Light Summer is the light one. We have a full side-by-side comparison if you are torn between them.

Can a True Summer wear black?

Not near your face. True Summer coloring is too gentle for true black, it drops a hard edge under the chin and pulls shadows forward. Use Cool navy (#2F4058) instead for anything worn up top, and keep black for trousers, shoes and bags where it has no effect on your skin.

Is True Summer warm or cool?

Cool. True Summer sits clearly on the cool side of the temperature axis, which is why silver, cool raspberry and the rest of the Summer palette settle the skin while orange and golden colors turn it ruddy or gray. Temperature is also its dominant axis, so coolness matters more here than depth or clarity.

Should a True Summer wear gold or silver?

Silver, White gold and Platinum. Metal is one of the fastest at-home tests there is: hold silver and gold either side of your face in daylight and watch your skin rather than the jewelry, the wrong metal leaves a gray or sallow cast along the jaw.

How does True Summer color analysis work?

True Summer color analysis places your coloring on three axes, depth, temperature and clarity, and checks they match True Summer, which is strongly cool, moderately light and moderately soft. You can approximate it at home with the metal, vein and contrast tests, but those disagree often. Our free analysis settles it: it scores all twelve seasons from your answers and one photo, so you see how far True Summer leads the neighbors it gets confused with.

What is the best color for a True Summer to wear near the face?

Cool raspberry (#C2185B) is the safest high-impact choice. Anything worn near the face, collars, scarves, knitwear, has the strongest effect on how your skin reads, so spend the palette there first and worry about trousers later.

Can I use the True Summer hex codes for makeup or hair dye?

Use them for clothing and accessories, where a screen color maps reasonably well to fabric. For makeup and hair, use the dedicated pages, pigment on skin behaves differently from dye on cloth, and the recommended shades there account for that.