Soft Summer Color Palette

The Soft Summer color palette

30 colours in four groups and 6 neutrals, each written out with its hex code — tap any code to copy it, or take a whole group at once. The same palette is available as a Soft Summer palette card (PNG) sized for a phone screen, to take shopping.

Soft Summer core and accent colors

The eight core colours are the ones to build clothes out of: greyed blues, dusty pinks and sage, all sitting at a medium depth with the brightness taken out. Every one of them has grey in it, which is the whole point — a Soft Summer face has low contrast and gentle colour, and a colour at the same intensity sits beside it instead of in front of it.

Accents are where the palette gets its life without breaking the rule. Muted raspberry and soft watermelon are the Soft Summer answer to bright pink and red; muted jade and soft cornflower are the answer to emerald and cobalt. A statement colour on this palette is still a soft one — it just carries more colour than the core. Soft lemon is here on purpose: yellow is not banned, only the clear, saturated version is.

The lightest and deepest Soft Summer shades

The lightest shades — powder blue grey, pale mauve, mist green — work for shirts, knitwear and summer fabrics. The deepest — soft navy, deep pine, soft aubergine, mulberry — are the Soft Summer version of dark, and they are what to reach for when an occasion seems to ask for black. This is also the answer to the dark soft summer palette people search for: the palette already has a deep end, it simply stays greyed.

Soft Summer neutrals

• Oyster#EFEDE9
• Soft white#F2F0EC
• Ash#8E8B87
• Pewter#8A8D8F
• Rose taupe#9F8C87
• Charcoal blue#4A4E56

Six neutrals carry everything else. Oyster and soft white replace optic white, charcoal blue and slate replace black, and rose taupe and cocoa are the Soft Summer browns — cool, greyed browns rather than warm camel or chocolate. Yes, a Soft Summer can wear navy and brown; the version that works is soft navy and a cool, rosy brown.

What makes a Soft Summer: warm or cool, light or deep, soft or bright

Soft Summer is the most muted of the cool seasons and one that people often reach late — after other tests put them in True Summer or Soft Autumn and the colours did not quite work. Hair, skin and eyes sit close together in both depth and intensity, so nothing in the face is loud, and colours with any saturation take the picture over.

The test on this page reads three things from your photo and turns each into a number between minus one and plus one. Warm–cool comes from the hue angle of your skin in CIE Lab, a colour space built to match how people see colour, with your hair as a second vote. Light–deep comes from skin and hair lightness together. Soft–bright comes from how saturated your irises are and how much contrast there is between your hair and your skin.

It calls you Soft Summer when three conditions hold. Warm–cool reads on the cool side. Soft–bright reads on the soft side. And soft–bright is further from zero than light–deep, with at least one of the two past 0.3 — meaning muting, not depth, is the strongest thing about your colouring. If neither axis gets past 0.3, nothing but the coolness is decisive, and the test calls you True Summer — or True Winter if your light–deep value is below zero.

That rule is also the most useful thing to know when your result feels wrong. A Soft Summer reading with a warm–cool value close to zero sits on the line with Soft Autumn. One where soft–bright only just beats light–deep sits on the line with True or Light Summer. The three bars on your result tell you which neighbour to check.

Soft Summer skin, eyes and hair

These are examples, not a checklist. Soft Summer exists at every skin depth; what makes it is the relationship between skin, hair and eyes — close together in depth, greyed rather than vivid, and cool rather than golden. Two people with identical skin can be different seasons because their hair and eyes are.

Am I a Soft Summer? A drape test you can do at home

Muting is the property to test, and it is easier to see in what fails than in what works.

1. 1

   Stand facing a window in daylight, with no coloured walls behind you and no makeup. Tie your hair back or cover it with a white towel so it does not vote.

2. 2

   Hold a clean, bright colour under your chin — a true red or a clear cobalt — and look at your face, not the fabric. Then swap it for a greyed version of the same colour: muted raspberry, or storm blue.

3. 3

   On a Soft Summer the bright colour wins the picture and the face goes quiet; the greyed one brings the face back into focus. If the bright colour looks better on you, you are not muted, and True Summer is the next season to check.

4. 4

   Now test temperature: camel against rose taupe. If rose taupe looks calm and camel makes the skin look yellow or tired, you are cool — Soft Summer. If camel warms the face, look at Soft Autumn.

• Put a clean bright colour under your chin — a true red, a clear cobalt. If the colour looks great and your face looks absent, you are muted.
• Then a greyed version of the same colour. If your features come back into focus, that is the season.
• Check contrast in a black-and-white photo of yourself: Soft Summers show very little separation between hair, skin and eyes.

Soft Summer vs Soft Autumn, True Summer and Light Summer

Soft Summer vs Soft Autumn is the single most common mix-up in the system, and for a good reason: on this test the two seasons are decided by the same axis, softness, and differ only in temperature. Both have low contrast, both look best in greyed colour, both are overwhelmed by brights. The difference is the cast of the skin and hair — ashy or rosy on a Soft Summer, golden or olive on a Soft Autumn. Camel against rose taupe decides it faster than pink against peach, because pinks and peaches are both too far from the neutral wardrobe you will actually wear. Lighting matters more here than anywhere else: a warm bulb pushes the skin hue toward yellow and turns Soft Summers into Soft Autumns.

Soft Summer vs True Summer is a question of how much muting you need. True Summer is called when coolness is the only decisive thing and neither depth nor clarity is strong; clean, cool mid-tones like denim and rose still look right on it. On a Soft Summer those same colours look a little too sharp and the greyed versions look better.

Soft Summer vs Light Summer is a question of depth. Light Summer sits high on the light–deep axis and carries pastels — powder blue, lilac, pearl — that flatten a Soft Summer. Soft Summer can carry the medium depths and the soft navy and pine at its deep end that would look heavy on a Light Summer.

Soft Summer colors to avoid, and what to wear instead

The three colours that fight a Soft Summer hardest are below. Three, not thirty — a palette is a prediction about which tones lift the face, not a list of banned colours, so every one of them has a version that does the same job.

• Hot pink#FF2E63
• Black#1C1C1C
• Vivid yellow#FFD400

Soft Summer outfits and clothing

Six combinations built only from the palette, shown in the proportions you would wear them — the largest block is the main garment, the smallest is the accessory.

• Storm and rose

  • Storm blue#7D95A3
  • Oyster#EFEDE9
  • Dusty rose#B98B9B

  Storm blue trousers, an oyster shirt, a dusty rose scarf. Easy for work.

• Sage and charcoal

  • Sage#8D9B8B
  • Charcoal blue#4A4E56
  • Greige#CFC7C1

  A sage knit over charcoal blue with greige shoes. The weekend default.

• Aubergine evening

  • Soft aubergine#5E4B5E
  • Pewter#8A8D8F
  • Smoky mauve#957A8C

  A soft aubergine dress, pewter jewellery, a smoky mauve wrap.

• Soft navy classic

  • Soft navy#3F4C63
  • Soft white#F2F0EC
  • Muted raspberry#A45A74

  A soft navy suit, soft white shirt, one muted raspberry accent. Interview-safe.

• Garden

  • Mist green#C9D3C8
  • Rose taupe#9F8C87
  • Soft teal#87A0A0

  Mist green top, rose taupe trousers, soft teal bag.

• Heather and ash

  • Heather#A89CAE
  • Ash#8E8B87
  • Powder blue grey#C5D0D8

  Heather jumper, ash grey jeans, powder blue grey shirt underneath.

Low-contrast prints work; high-contrast ones fight. A watercolour floral in dusty rose and sage, a blurred check in storm blue and greige, a fine stripe in charcoal blue and oyster — all fine. A crisp black-and-white stripe, a saturated tropical print or a bold geometric does to the face what black does: it puts the loudest thing in the outfit right under it. Mid-sized, soft-edged patterns are the safe middle.

Soft Summer capsule wardrobe

• Charcoal blue blazer
• Soft navy trousers
• Oyster knit
• Rose taupe coat
• Blue grey shirt
• Sage cardigan
• Ash denim
• Storm blue dress
• Dusty rose blouse
• Soft aubergine evening top
• Pewter or brushed silver jewellery
• Greige shoes and bag

Soft Summer color palette for men

The whole wardrobe translates directly. A charcoal blue or soft navy suit does what a black suit does in other wardrobes, and looks more expensive against a Soft Summer face. Shirts in soft white, blue grey and powder blue grey rather than stark white; knitwear in heather, sage and slate. Ties and pocket squares carry the accents — muted plum, dusty blue, muted jade — and a rose taupe or cocoa overcoat replaces camel. The one habit to drop is black on black: a black suit with a white shirt is the highest-contrast outfit a man can wear, and a Soft Summer has the lowest-contrast colouring in the system.

Soft Summer makeup

The whole face works better a step down in saturation, not a step down in colour.

Shade is decided by your season; where the colour goes is decided by your eye shape.

Soft Summer nail colors

• Dusty rose#B98B9B
• Smoky mauve#957A8C
• Greige#CFC7C1
• Soft navy#3F4C63
• Muted raspberry#A45A74
• Sheer soft pink#E0C3C8

The best hair colors for a Soft Summer

Cool medium brown, soft ash tones, mushroom blonde. High-contrast colouring — platinum over dark, or bright highlights — works against the season by manufacturing contrast the face does not have.

Going grey tends to suit a Soft Summer better than most seasons, because grey hair is exactly the kind of colour the palette is made of: cool and greyed. The contrast between hair and skin often drops further, which keeps the face in the same season rather than pushing it somewhere else. Blending grey with a soft ash tone rather than covering it with warm brown is usually the more flattering route.

Hair colors that fight a Soft Summer

What to avoid follows from the same logic. Copper, honey and golden blonde add warmth the skin has no warmth to meet, and the face reads sallow next to them. Platinum over dark roots, or bright chunky highlights, manufacture contrast the face does not have. Very dark, cool black is the hair version of a black dress.

Soft Summer jewelry: gold or silver?

Brushed silver and matte white metals. Polished anything is slightly too bright; pewter is the ideal finish.

Brushed silver, white gold and pewter are the natural metals — matte or brushed rather than mirror-polished, because polish adds sparkle and sparkle is a kind of brightness.

Can a Soft Summer wear gold? A pale, brushed rose gold works, and so does a soft champagne gold. Polished yellow gold is the one to skip near the face. Stones follow the palette: rose quartz, moonstone, grey pearl, blue topaz and smoky quartz rather than bright emerald or ruby.

Glasses frames work the same way: grey-blue, taupe, rose-brown or translucent grey rather than black. Colour is decided here; the frame shape is decided by your face shape.

Soft Summer celebrities, and why this page does not list them

This page does not list Soft Summer celebrities, and there is a specific reason for it. A colour season is read from how skin, hair and eyes relate in neutral daylight. A celebrity photo is shot under studio light, colour-graded afterwards, and taken of someone whose hair colour and makeup are chosen by a stylist. Lists built from those photos disagree with each other constantly — the same actress appears as Soft Summer on one site and Soft Autumn on another — because they are measuring the photograph.

The measurement that is worth having is your own, from a photo taken facing a window. That is what the test at the top of this page reads.

Can your Soft Summer color season change?

The honest answer is that your measured result can change even if your colouring has not. A tan changes skin depth, which moves you along the light–deep axis; temperature is the more stable property, so a tanned Soft Summer usually stays in the cool family. If the extra depth ends up further from zero than the softness, the test will call it Deep Winter instead.

Hair dye changes the result more than anything else, because hair carries a large share of both the depth and the softness axes. Warm dye pushes the reading toward Soft Autumn; a dark, cool dye deepens the colouring and adds contrast against the skin, which can push it into the Winter seasons. The system is usually taught as describing natural colouring, but the colours that flatter you follow what you actually look like now.

Age tends to soften everything — hair greys, contrast drops — which is why many people read as more muted over time than they did at twenty.

Why selfie tests give Soft Summers different results

Soft Summer and Soft Autumn are separated by temperature alone on this test, so the colour of the light in your photo decides more for a Soft Summer than for almost any other season. A warm indoor bulb shifts the skin hue toward yellow and can turn the result into Soft Autumn; cold shade or a blue-lit screen pushes it the other way.

The test looks for the whites of your eyes and uses them as a neutral reference to correct the colour of the light. If they are visible, the result says it was corrected; if not, it says it was not, and that result should be read against its neighbour rather than trusted outright. The full explanation of the correction is on the color analysis page.

References

1. 1.Fink, B., Grammer, K., & Matts, P. J. (2006). Visible skin color distribution plays a role in the perception of age, attractiveness, and health in female faces. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(6), 433–442. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2006.08.007.
2. 2.Chardon, A., Cretois, I., & Hourseau, C. (1991). Skin colour typology and suntanning pathways. International Journal of Cosmetic Science, 13(4), 191–208. PMID 19291061.