Summer · color season
Light Summer: your palette, and what to leave on the rail.
Light Summer is cool and light with low contrast. Here is the palette that follows from that, the neutrals to build on, and how to wear them together.
- 8 core colors
- silver at the wrist
- 10 minutes to get yours
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At a glance
Where Light Summer sits, and what follows from it.
- Light Summer
- True Summer
- Soft Summer
- Soft Autumn
- True Autumn
- Deep Autumn
- Deep Winter
- True Winter
- Bright Winter
- Bright Spring
- True Spring
- Light Spring
Each season sits between the two it shades into. The two Light seasons meet at the top, the two Deep ones at the bottom, the two Bright ones on the clear side and the two Soft ones on the muted side. Spring and Autumn are warm, Summer and Winter are cool.
- Undertone
- cool
- Value
- light
- Chroma
- muted
- Buy first
- Light forget-me-not
- Metal
- Silver
- Keep from the face
- Warm pink
- Warm aquamarine
- Forest green
- Rust
- Mistaken for
- Soft SummerLight SpringHow they differ
Am I a Light Summer?
Light Summer is the one cool season led by lightness: your hair, skin and eyes all sit near the light end of the scale, your undertone (the cast under the skin) is cool and rosy, and the colors that suit you are soft, with a little gray in them.
Colors at that same light, cool level keep your face the clearest thing in view, while dark or warm colors at the collar outweigh it and leave it looking pale and tired.
Check it by a window, without makeup. Natural hair runs from light ash blonde to light ash brown, with no gold or red when the sun catches it. Eyes are light blue, gray-blue or light green, soft at the rim rather than sharply outlined. Skin leans rosy rather than golden. Veins at the wrist that read blue or purple point the same way, but they are the weakest of these signals, and reading your undertone at home explains why.
Lightness is the trait to confirm first. Albert Munsell called it value, "the quality by which we distinguish a light color from a dark one", in A Color Notation (1905). Take a daylight photo of your face and switch it to black and white. On a Light Summer, hair, skin and eyes come out as pale grays close together, with no feature much darker than the rest.
Then a shop test. Hold a mint top and a forest green one to your face by a window: two greens at two depths. Mint sits at your own lightness and your face stays in front. Forest green becomes the heaviest thing in the mirror, and the shadows under your eyes look darker beside it.
The analysis runs that comparison for all 50 colors and gives each one Wear, Depends or Skip with its reason, where Depends means below the waist or as an accent only. A Light Summer gets 12 Wear, 27 Depends and 11 Skip.
The sample analysis, co-founder Filip Poláček's real result, shows the same colors from the other side. He is a Deep Autumn, and five of your eight core colors are a Skip on his page, light forget-me-not with the reason "Too washed to do anything." The other three go below his waist. On a Light Summer those eight are a Wear at the collar, and they make the palette.
Check the direction first.
Four questions from the questionnaire, scored by the rules the analysis uses. They show a direction, not a season: the analysis also reads your photos.
Question 1 of 4
Your natural hair color?
Pick the closest match. If you dye it, go by your roots.
The palette
The eight colors Light Summer is built on.
- Anywhere, the face included
Periwinkle on most charts, and your power color: a blue with lavender in it, about as light as your skin. Wear it at the collar, as a shirt or a fine knit.
- Anywhere, the face included
It repeats the rose already in your cheeks, so it reads as color in the face rather than as a garment. A tee, a blouse, a lipstick.
- Anywhere, the face included
The most colorful of your pale tones, and no darker than the rest. A lavender linen shirt or summer dress adds color without adding depth.
- Anywhere, the face included
Gray enough to work as a neutral, blue enough to count as color. Wear it daily, as a shirt under a soft navy blazer or as a whole coat.
- Anywhere, the face included
The only green you wear at the face: sage and emerald stay small accents, and leaf green is a Skip. Put it in a tee or a light summer knit.
- Anywhere, the face included
Nearly white, and cool where ivory is warm. On a hot day an ice blue shirt does a white shirt's job without the glare of pure white.
- Anywhere, the face included
Soft pink with gray mixed in, which keeps it calm over a large area. That makes it the pink for a whole coat, a dress or a men's knit.
- Anywhere, the face included
Of the 12 seasons, only Light Summer and Light Spring wear light denim at the face. A light denim shirt goes with the other seven colors here.
Neutrals and metal
Your neutrals, your white, your metal
Your neutrals are soft white, light gray, warm greige, dusty blue and soft navy, and all but soft navy sit on the light side. Light gray does the everyday job black does in darker wardrobes: the trousers, the suit, the knit. Soft navy is the deepest color you wear at the face, so it takes the blazer and the winter coat. Warm greige is the only one that leans warm, and it is grayed enough to be a Wear at the collar too.
Black, charcoal, chocolate and espresso are missing on purpose. Your page gives all four a Depends, below the waist: trousers and shoes, where their depth sits far from your face and anchors the outfit instead of competing with it.
Your white is soft white. Pure white fails because it is brighter than anything in your coloring: the shirt becomes the lit object in the mirror and your face looks a step duller next to it. Ivory fails the other way, its yellow showing against cool skin.
Your page gives both a Depends as an accent, a belt or a shoe, never the shirt. To see it, hold a pure white shirt and a soft white one under your chin by a window and keep the one that leaves your face brighter than the fabric.
Your metal is silver: a steel watch, white gold, silver frames and buttons. Yellow gold reads heavy and slightly brassy against cool, light skin. Your power color, light forget-me-not, is the one color worth owning in several pieces. What works against you fails in three distinct ways, and the pairs below show two of them.
At the face
Wear this, skip that
- Soft pinkWarm pink
Too warm beside your cool.
- MintWarm aquamarine
Too warm beside your cool.
- Warm greigeForest green
Too dark for your light.
- Dusty pinkRust
Too dark for your light.
The colors that fight you
Eleven of the 50 colors are a Skip for a Light Summer, and your page gives each of them one of three reasons.
Too warm beside your cool. Eight of the eleven: tomato red, coral, warm pink, peach, orange, golden yellow, leaf green and warm aquamarine. Each carries yellow, and next to rosy, light skin that yellow lands on the face itself, so the skin looks sallow and any redness shows more. The pairs above set the cool version beside two of them: soft pink against warm pink, mint against warm aquamarine.
Too dark for your light. Rust and forest green. Either one at the collar is the heaviest thing in the picture, and your face reads as the pale area above it. They sit in the pairs above, beside dusty pink and warm greige.
Too clean for your softness. Lemon alone. A yellow with no gray in it carries more color than any part of your face, so the eye stops at the garment.
The neutrals people buy by accident are not on that list, which is the trap. Black, charcoal, pure white, ivory and camel all pass the shop's test of "goes with everything", and none is a Skip, but none belongs at your collar: black and charcoal go below the waist, and pure white, ivory and camel stay accents.
At the rail, use soft navy as your measuring stick. Nothing darker than soft navy is a Wear for you, so a darker piece goes below the waist, into an accent, or back on the rail.
Every color
All 50 colors, judged for Light Summer.
Choose a color to see where it goes, the reason, and what the two seasons Light Summer is mistaken for do with it. 11 of the 50 are a Skip.
Use the arrow keys to move from color to color.
Anywhere, the face included
A shirt, a coat, anywhere.
The same color in the seasons Light Summer is mistaken for
- Soft SummerAnywhere, the face included
- Light SpringAnywhere, the face included
Anywhere, the face included
A shirt, a coat, anywhere.
The same color in the seasons Light Summer is mistaken for
- Soft SummerAnywhere, the face included
- Light SpringAnywhere, the face included
How to combine Light Summer colors
The rule the analysis gives a Light Summer is tone on tone in cool lights, low contrast, and camel only below the waist.
Your hair, skin and eyes sit close together, so an outfit with a big jump from light to dark has more contrast than you do, and the eye goes to the jump instead of to your face. Keep pieces within a step of each other in lightness. When one piece has to be darker, put it below the waist and set a mid tone such as light gray between it and the top. Camel stays small and low, as a belt or a pair of shoes.
- Office, men's: a light gray suit, a dusty blue shirt, a soft navy knit tie, chocolate shoes and a steel watch.
- Weekend, women's: a dusty pink cardigan over a soft white tee, light denim jeans and camel sandals.
- Summer evening, women's: a lavender slip dress with fuchsia sandals and silver earrings.
- Weekend, men's: a mint tee under a light denim shirt worn open, medium denim jeans and pure white sneakers.
Soft Summer and Light Spring wear a good share of this list too, and that overlap is where most doubt about a Light Summer starts.
Mistaken for
Seasons Light Summer gets confused with
 This pageLight Summercool and light with low contrast |  Mistaken forSoft Summercool and grayed down |  Mistaken forLight Springwarm and light with low contrast | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Undertone | cool | cool | warm |
| Value | light | medium | light |
| Chroma | muted | muted | saturated |
| Metal | silver | matte silver | gold |
| Ice blue | |||
| Soft pink | |||
| Peach | |||
| Ivory | |||
| Light denim | |||
| Medium denim |
Soft Summer. Both are cool and low in contrast, both wear soft white, and the two give the same verdict on 31 of the 50 colors, with no color a Wear for one and a Skip for the other. The difference is depth: Soft Summer sits at medium value and runs grayer. Denim shows it best. Light denim is a Wear for you and a Depends below the waist for a Soft Summer, and medium denim is the reverse.
Hold one shirt of each at your face by a window: on a Light Summer the light wash matches the face, and the medium wash becomes the darkest thing in the mirror. Ice blue and soft pink point the same way, both a Wear for you, while a Soft Summer keeps ice blue to an accent and soft pink below the waist.
Light Spring. Both are light and low in contrast, and both wear light forget-me-not and light denim at the face. What splits them is undertone: Light Spring is warm, you are cool, and only 20 of the 50 colors get the same verdict. Hold an ice blue top and a peach one, both pale, so only the warmth differs.
Peach is a Light Spring core color and a Skip for you, and ice blue is a Wear for you and a Skip for Light Spring. The whites follow the same line: ivory is a Wear for Light Spring and an accent for you, and Light Spring's metal is gold.
If the denim test sends you to the medium wash but grayed colors still look dull on you, read True Summer next: it sits between Light Summer and Soft Summer on the wheel, at medium depth with more clarity. Light Summer vs Soft Summer and Light Spring vs Light Summer take each border step by step, with the lighting set up.
Where to go from Light Summer
How the color analysis works
Color seasonSoft Summercool and grayed down
Color seasonLight Springwarm and light with low contrast
Seasons · 11 min
Light Summer vs Soft Summer: how to tell which one you are
Both are cool-neutral and low contrast. Light Summer is light, Soft Summer is medium and more muted, and two denim shirts show you which one you are.
Seasons · 9 min
Light Spring vs Light Summer: how to tell which one you are
Both are light and low contrast, and both own periwinkle. Undertone is the main split, and the peach and pink test tells you which side you are on.
Seasons · 9 min
Find your undertone at home (warm, cool, or neutral)
Three daylight tests to find your undertone at home: wrist veins, gold vs silver, white paper. Plus how to read a neutral or olive result.
Method · 8 min
How to take photos for an accurate color analysis
The light, the angles, and the white paper trick. How to take five photos that give a color analysis something real to work with.
- All 12 color seasons
FAQ
Light Summer questions.
Light Summer is cool and light with low contrast. The quick check is whether cool colors at a light value look better on you than their opposite, and whether silver suits you better than the other metal. That gets you close. The reason people land between two seasons is that the eye compares badly under mixed light, which is what a measured analysis is for.
Nothing dramatic. The colors furthest from your palette pull attention to shadows and to any unevenness in your skin, so you look tired rather than the color looking wrong. It shows most in the piece nearest your face and barely at all below the waist, which is why the palette matters more for a shirt than for trousers.
Below the waist only. Black brings a depth your light coloring never reaches, so the contrast lands on the clothes rather than on you. Keep it to trousers and shoes and let soft navy cover the dark jobs above the waist.
No. Light Summer is cool at its root, and that is the axis the whole system turns on. Two seasons can share a value and a chroma and still want opposite colors, because the undertone decides which version of a color suits you.
That is what the analysis does, but not from one photo and not from the photo alone. It reads five photos against your own answers about how you burn, what your veins look like and which metal suits you, and your answers outrank the photos where the two disagree. Your photos are used for your analysis and nothing else. They are never used to train AI models.
Yes, each at its own distance from your face. Warm greige is the beige to buy: a Wear, the collar included. Camel and latte are a Depends as accents, a belt, shoes or a bag, because both run warmer than your coloring. Khaki, chocolate and espresso are a Depends below the waist, so they work as trousers and shoes. The warmer or darker the brown, the farther from your face it goes.
Soft navy, anywhere. It is the deepest color that is a Wear at your face, which makes it your blazer, your coat and the dark half of most outfits. Midnight blue, the darker navy, is a Depends below the waist: good trousers, too heavy at the collar.
The cool ones, in small pieces. Raspberry, fuchsia, sharp red, royal blue, emerald, turquoise and deep purple are all a Depends as accents: a scarf, a strap, a shoe. They share your undertone but carry more strength than your coloring, so at the size of a shirt they take the outfit over. The warm brights, coral, orange, tomato red and golden yellow, are a Skip at any size, and so is lemon.
Both washes, which is not true of shirts. As jeans, light denim and medium denim both work, since medium denim is a Depends below the waist. Above the waist only the light wash belongs: a light denim shirt or jacket is a Wear, while a medium denim one is a step too deep for your collar.
Your analysis reads your coloring as it is now. The questionnaire asks for your natural hair color, by the roots if you dye it, and gray or white is one of its answers, so gray hair is read as gray rather than as the shade it used to be. If you color your hair, ash and beige blondes keep the light, cool read, while golden, copper and very dark shades bring a warmth or a depth the rest of your palette then has to argue with.
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