The twelve colour seasons

What the system actually measures

Three things about your colouring, and nothing else. Temperature is where your skin hue falls in the narrow band all human skin occupies — everyone is some version of orange, and the question is whether you sit toward the pink end or the golden one. Depth is how light or dark. Clarity is how saturated, read from the eye and from the contrast between hair and skin.

Each season has one of those as its dominant characteristic, which outranks the others when they disagree. That is the whole structure: twelve seasons, four families, six dominant characteristics, two seasons each.

The six pairs

Two seasons share each dominant characteristic and differ on one axis. If a reading is going to be wrong, this is almost always where — so it is the most useful table on the page.

Spring

• Light Spring

  Light colouring with warmth in it, and little contrast between hair, skin and eyes.

  Lightness dominant. Metals: Light gold, or rose gold.

• Warm Spring

  Unambiguously warm at medium depth, with enough clarity to carry golden colours without going heavy.

  Warmth dominant. Metals: Yellow gold.

• Clear Spring

  Warm and notably clear — high contrast colouring where bright colours read as correct rather than loud.

  Clarity dominant. Metals: Bright yellow gold.

Summer

• Light Summer

  Light colouring that leans cool, with the same low contrast as its Spring counterpart.

  Lightness dominant. Metals: Silver, white gold, or very pale rose gold.

• Cool Summer

  Cool at medium depth with muted chroma — colours that have some grey in them rather than none.

  Coolness dominant. Metals: Silver and white gold.

• Soft Summer

  Neutral in temperature and muted in chroma — the least emphatic of the twelve on every axis.

  Softness dominant. Metals: Brushed silver or matte white gold.

Autumn

• Soft Autumn

  Mildly warm and muted — the season that bridges Summer and Autumn, and the softest of the warm ones.

  Softness dominant. Metals: Antique or brushed gold.

• Warm Autumn

  Strongly warm at medium depth, with muted chroma — rich, spiced, golden colours rather than bright ones.

  Warmth dominant. Metals: Yellow gold, copper, bronze.

• Deep Autumn

  Deep colouring with warmth in it — dark enough that depth outranks every other characteristic.

  Depth dominant. Metals: Deep yellow gold and bronze.

Winter

• Deep Winter

  Deep and cool — the darkest of the cool seasons, and the one that carries true black best.

  Depth dominant. Metals: Silver, platinum, white gold.

• Cool Winter

  Unambiguously cool at medium depth, with the clarity to carry saturated colour.

  Coolness dominant. Metals: Silver and platinum.

• Clear Winter

  High clarity with neutral-to-cool temperature — saturated colour reads as correct rather than loud.

  Clarity dominant. Metals: Bright silver and platinum.

Why a photograph alone cannot tell you

The room's lighting shifts measured skin hue by more than the gap between two adjacent seasons. A warm bulb pushes a cool complexion into the warm band; daylight through a green curtain does the opposite. Any tool that reads a season straight off an uncorrected photo is mostly reporting the room.

Our tool white-balances against the whites of your eyes first — a reference that is in the same photo, under the same light, and close to neutral on every human being. It then reports the three axes alongside the season, so you can see which one was decisive and how close the call was.

Seasonal colour analysis is a styling convention, not a finding about anyone. What is measurable is the hue, lightness and chroma of skin, hair and eyes. Which colours anyone prefers is a matter of taste, and no season is presented as better than another.