Soft Summer Color Palette

At a glance

Where Soft Summer sits, and what follows from it.

Soft Summercool and grayed downThis page

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: medium
Chroma: muted
Buy first: Raspberry
Metal: Matte silver
Keep from the face: Warm aquamarine
Warm pink
Leaf green
Peach
Mistaken for: True Summer Soft Autumn How they differ

Am I a Soft Summer?

Soft Summer is the season led by softness: your coloring is low in chroma, meaning grayed rather than clean, your undertone (the cast under the skin) is cool, and your hair, skin and eyes sit together at a medium depth.

Grayed, cool colors match that coloring, so your features keep their edges, while a clean, bright color is seen before your face is and a warm one puts a yellow cast on the skin.

Chroma is the deciding trait here, so the word is worth a moment. Albert Munsell used it in A Color Notation (1905) for the strength of a color, and described a color moving toward gray as "the graying of each color, which is loss of chroma". That loss is what this season is built on, which is why The Concept Wardrobe defines a Soft Summer as muted first and cool second.

Three mirror checks, in daylight and without makeup. Eyes first, the strongest tell: a Soft Summer eye, gray, gray-blue, gray-green or a grayish brown, looks smoky, and the pattern of the iris blurs at conversation distance instead of resolving into clean lines. Contrast second: hair, skin and eyes blend into one soft band, with no sharp jump from light to dark.

Hair usually runs ash, from medium ash blonde to medium ash brown, as Curate Your Style also describes it, though dye and sun move it. Wrist veins come last and count least: they read blue, sometimes mixed with green (how to check your undertone at home).

The four questions beside this text can confirm the cool half. The soft half shows in your eyes and skin more than in any answer, which is why the analysis reads it mostly from your photos. For a shop test, hold a dusty blue shirt and a royal blue one to your face.

Dusty blue sits level with your coloring and your face stays in front. Royal blue is seen first, and your features look grayer and less defined beside it. On your page dusty blue is a Wear and royal blue a Skip, too clean for your softness.

The analysis makes that call for each of the 50 colors, Wear, Depends or Skip, with its reason, and Depends means below the waist or as an accent only. A Soft Summer gets 13 Wear, 16 Depends and 21 Skip, the longest Skip list of the three Summers.

A verdict is about the person wearing the color: on the sample analysis, co-founder Filip Poláček's Deep Autumn result, not one of your eight core colors is a Wear, and medium gray, a Wear at your collar, goes below his waist as "A cool, faded gray that reads thin against your depth." On you, sage leads the eight.

Free quick checkSelf-check in four questions

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.

Indicative result only

The palette

The eight colors Soft Summer is built on.

Sage
Anywhere, the face included
A green with so much gray in it that it works like a neutral, which is your chroma exactly. A sage knit, shirt or coat goes with medium gray and soft navy.
Dusty pink
Anywhere, the face included
The pink for your collar. The cleaner soft pink is a Depends below the waist, so for a blouse, a scarf or a lipstick, choose the dusty one.
Dusty blue
Anywhere, the face included
Your shirt. With medium denim it makes a low-contrast outfit in which the clearest thing is your face.
Mauve
Anywhere, the face included
Dusty pink taken a step deeper, for when an outfit needs weight but not a dark color: a mauve dress, a knit, a men's crew-neck.
Mint
Anywhere, the face included
Your lightest green, at its best in matte cotton or wool. Shine adds a clarity your coloring does not have.
Light forget-me-not
Anywhere, the face included
The periwinkle of most charts, and the only blue here that reads as color rather than as a neutral. Shirts, scarves, light knits.
Medium denim
Anywhere, the face included
The wash that matches your depth, while light denim goes below the waist. Wear it as jeans, a chambray shirt, or a jacket over sage.
Lavender
Anywhere, the face included
Cool and grayed, your two leading traits, in a light color. A lavender knit over medium gray trousers is a complete outfit for a man or a woman.

Neutrals and metal

Your neutrals, your white, your metal

Your neutrals are soft white, warm greige, medium gray, light gray and soft navy, every one of them grayed. Medium gray and soft navy do the heavy work: the suit, the coat, the trousers. Warm greige leans warm, but its warmth is grayed down far enough to be a Wear at your collar. Every Summer wears it there, while the three Winters, whose coloring is clear, keep it to an accent.

Black and charcoal are missing, and so are the browns. Your page gives black, charcoal, chocolate, espresso, camel and latte a Depends, below the waist: trousers, shoes, a bag. A suit jacket sits right under your collar, so charcoal belongs in the trousers and medium gray or soft navy in the suit.

Your white is soft white. Pure white and ivory both get a Depends, below the waist. Pure white brings a clarity muted coloring has no answer for, so at the collar the shirt looks sharp and the face above it loses its edges. Ivory brings a warmth your cool undertone cannot take, and near the face it reads slightly grubby. Soft white is grayed enough to belong to you, and one soft white shirt fixes more outfits than any new color.

Your metal is matte silver: brushed silver, oxidized silver, pewter, a brushed steel watch. Polished silver adds a shine that behaves like clarity, the one quality this season avoids. Your power color is raspberry grayed toward mauve, not the clean raspberry among the 50. That one is a Skip, and so are twenty more, for three reasons.

At the face

Wear this, skip that

MintWarm aquamarine
Too warm beside your cool.
Dusty pinkWarm pink
Too warm beside your cool.
SageLeaf green
Too warm beside your cool.
Warm greigePeach
Too warm beside your cool.

The colors that fight you

Twenty-one of the 50 colors are a Skip on a Soft Summer page, and each falls under one of three reasons.

Too warm beside your cool. Thirteen of them: tomato red, coral, rust, warm pink, peach, orange, terracotta, mustard, golden yellow, light gold, leaf green, olive and warm aquamarine. Each one pulls your skin toward yellow, and on a face this low in contrast that reads as tiredness rather than as a wrong color. The pairs above set four of them against grayed, cool counterparts, such as warm pink against dusty pink and leaf green against sage.

Too clean for your softness. Sharp red, raspberry, fuchsia, emerald, royal blue and deep purple, with turquoise beside them. Most are cool, and True Summer wears the first six at the collar, so temperature is not the problem. Strength is: a pure color carries more chroma than anything in your face, and the eye stops at the garment.

Too dark. Forest green is the one color skipped for depth alone. The other darks, black, charcoal, espresso, chocolate, midnight blue, plum and wine, are a Depends below the waist, as trousers, shoes or a bag.

The purchases that go wrong are usually not on this list. A black blazer, a pure white shirt and a camel coat are a Depends for you, not a Skip, but all three colors belong below the waist, and a blazer, a shirt and a coat cannot go there. At the rail, squint until the shapes blur. A color that still jumps out is cleaner than your coloring; one that settles quietly beside a medium gray has your chroma. Check its warmth separately, against your soft white.

Every color

All 50 colors, judged for Soft Summer.

Choose a color to see where it goes, the reason, and what the two seasons Soft Summer is mistaken for do with it. 21 of the 50 are a Skip.

Anywhere, the face included13

Below the waist or as an accent16

Not worn21

Raspberry

Not worn

Too clean for your softness.

The same color in the seasons Soft Summer is mistaken for

True SummerAnywhere, the face included
Soft AutumnNot worn

Raspberry

Not worn

Too clean for your softness.

The same color in the seasons Soft Summer is mistaken for

True SummerAnywhere, the face included
Soft AutumnNot worn

How to combine Soft Summer colors

The rule the analysis gives a Soft Summer is grayed neighboring tones, never clean saturated colors, and low contrast.

Neighboring means close on the color wheel and close in depth: sage with mint, mauve with dusty pink, dusty blue with light forget-me-not and medium denim. Nothing in those pairs competes, so your face, low in contrast itself, stays the focus. Keep the distance from your lightest to your darkest piece short, and get variety from texture instead: a matte knit, a brushed cotton, a suede shoe.

Office, men's: a soft navy suit, a dusty blue shirt, a mauve knit tie, chocolate shoes and a brushed steel watch.
Office, women's: a medium gray trouser suit, a dusty pink silk blouse, plum pumps and pewter earrings.
Weekend, anyone: a sage overshirt over a light gray tee, medium denim jeans and camel suede shoes.
Evening, women's: a mauve slip dress under a warm greige coat, matte silver earrings and wine shoes.

True Summer and Soft Autumn each share part of this wardrobe, one on the cool side and one on the soft side.

Mistaken for

Seasons Soft Summer gets confused with

	This pageSoft Summercool and grayed down	Mistaken forTrue Summerfully cool and softly muted	Mistaken forSoft Autumnwarm and muted with low contrast
Undertone	cool	cool	warm
Value	medium	medium	medium
Chroma	muted	saturated	muted
Metal	matte silver	silver	matte gold
Raspberry
Peach
Royal blue
Sage
Ivory
Soft white

True Summer. Both are cool, both sit at medium depth, and five of your eight core colors are True Summer core colors too. The two give the same verdict on 40 of the 50 colors, the closest pair among the Summers, and the ten that differ are almost all about clarity.

Raspberry and royal blue are a Wear for a True Summer and a Skip for you, while sage runs the other way, a Wear for you and an accent for a True Summer. Hold a clean raspberry at your jaw in daylight. If the color arrives first and your jawline softens, you are the Soft Summer.

Soft Autumn. Both are muted, both are low in contrast, both sit at medium depth, and sage heads both palettes. What splits them is undertone: Soft Autumn is warm, you are cool, and only 23 of the 50 colors get the same verdict. Peach is the tell, a Soft Autumn core color and a Skip for you.

Hold it at your jaw: if it warms you, you are a Soft Autumn, and if your skin looks slightly sallow, you are a Soft Summer. The whites agree, soft white a Wear for you and a Depends below the waist for a Soft Autumn, ivory the reverse, and so do the neutrals as a set: your grays against its warm browns.

For the chroma border, Soft Summer vs True Summer runs the raspberry test step by step. For the undertone border, Soft Autumn vs Soft Summer does the same with two whites under your chin. If both tests leave you unsure and your coloring looks lighter than medium, the last question below covers Light Summer.

Where to go from Soft Summer

How the color analysis works

FAQ

Soft Summer questions.

Soft Summer is cool and grayed down. The quick check is whether cool colors at a medium value look better on you than their opposite, and whether matte 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. Your coloring is grayed down and black has no gray in it at all, so near your face it flattens you. Black trousers work, and medium gray or soft navy do the serious jobs higher up.

No. Soft 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.

Raspberry, grayed down: a raspberry with gray in it, on its way to mauve. The clean raspberry among the 50 colors is a Skip for you, too clean for your softness, and belongs to True Summer. When you cannot find the muted version, mauve and dusty pink are the nearest colors that are a Wear for you, the collar included. Wear it near the face and keep the rest of the outfit quiet: medium gray, soft white, soft navy.

Rose gold, yes, in a brushed or muted finish. Bright yellow gold, no: it brings warmth and shine together, the two things this season has least room for. Curate Your Style gives the same advice, brushed rose gold that leans pink rather than copper and very yellow gold with caution. Your own metal is matte silver, for the same reason: shine reads as clarity.

Below the waist. Chocolate, espresso, camel and latte all get a Depends for a Soft Summer: trousers, shoes or a bag rather than a shirt, because they carry more warmth or more depth than your face can hold. Near the face, warm greige is the brown-leaning neutral that works, grayed enough to belong to you.

By the palette, yes. Royal blue is a Skip for a Soft Summer rather than a Depends, so there is no below-the-waist version of it either, and the reason is strength, not temperature: at that saturation the blue is seen before your face is. The palette's answer is light forget-me-not, a blue at a strength your coloring can hold, or grayed raspberry if what you loved was the color moment rather than the blue.

Depth decides it. Both are cool and low in contrast and they share 31 of the 50 verdicts, but Light Summer sits lighter and a little clearer. Medium denim, medium gray and mauve are a Wear for you and a Depends below the waist for a Light Summer, while light denim and soft pink are a Wear for a Light Summer and go below the waist on you. Hold a medium denim shirt at your face: if it gives you definition rather than weighing on you, you are the Soft Summer. Light Summer vs Soft Summer has the full test.

Another question about the method or your result? Write to us

Soft Summer: your palette, and what to leave on the rail.

Where Soft Summer sits, and what follows from it.