Dark Autumn Season Guide

If you’re a Dark Autumn, you stand out in warm-neutral, high-contrast shades with a velvety, medium clarity. Think scarlet, rust, deep gold, pine green, and chocolate.

Already know you’re a Dark Autumn? See your colors!

Are You a Dark Autumn?

Look for 3 traits: high contrast, warm-neutral undertone, and medium clarity (saturation). You’ll find descriptions of each below to help confirm if you’re a Dark Autumn.

Contrast

Contrast is the difference in value (light vs dark) between your features, including your skin, hair, eyes, teeth, and eyebrows. Dark Autumns have a high contrast between their features. 

You likely have high contrast if any of these feel true:

• Dark brown to black hair
• Medium‑depth hair and very dark eyes
• Medium-deep to deep skin paired with very dark hair or eyes

Undertone

Skin Undertone

Look at areas that don’t carry their own tint, like the sides of your face or the center of your forehead. Rosy cheeks or darkening around the mouth or under the eyes could impact the visibility of your undertone.

For a Dark Autumn, you’re looking for a bit of warmth (orange tone) in your skin, indicating a warm or warm-neutral undertone. 

Warm-Neutral

A warm-neutral undertone will show visible warmth, leaning slightly toward an orange-toned hue.

Note that you won’t find a perfect match to your skin, as our skin is made up of many colors, but you want to see if your skin has a similar level of warmth as the swatches below.

Warm

If your skin shows even more warmth and leans more toward orange, you likely have a warm undertone.

Cool and Cool-Neutral

If your skin shows less warmth and leans more toward pink, yellow, or gray, you likely have a cool undertone.

Hair Undertone

Your hair is a secondary but still helpful indicator of undertone. You’re looking to see if your hair has any signs of warmth, meaning that it contains orange. 

Check your natural hair color at your roots, the part of your hair closest to your scalp, as sun and environmental factors can alter the lightness and warmth of your hair. If you have gray hair or colored hair, try to look back at photos of your hair before it changed color. 

Neutral

Black, dark brown, and medium neutral brown hair contribute a neutral undertone, and provide the contrast often found in Dark Autumns.

Slightly warm

Dark red, auburn, and warm brown hair contribute to a slightly warm undertone.

Warm

Ginger, copper, and red hair contribute to a warm undertone often seen in Dark Autumns.

Putting Skin and Hair Undertone Together

Dark Autumns have a warm-neutral undertone, meaning they have some visible warmth in their skin tone and hair. Based on the undertones in your hair and skin, you can determine your overall undertone.

Clarity

Clarity refers to how clear and saturated your features are. High-saturation colors have no gray in them, and low-saturation colors have a lot of gray. This can refer to your skin, hair, eyes, and lips. Dark Autumns have medium clarity, meaning most of their features fall between gray-leaning low clarity and the vibrancy of high clarity. 

Determining Clarity

High Clarity

High clarity has high pigment with very little appearance of gray. High clarity eyes often appear sparkly, bold-colored, and you can often see a clear pattern in the iris. High clarity skin will again appear pigmented, and can often have a bright, glowy appearance. Overall, high clarity features will appear bold and colorful.

Low Clarity

Low clarity has low pigment and can often appear cloudy or gray. Low clarity eyes could appear foggy, a muted color, and an indistinguishable pattern on the iris. Low clarity skin can have a slightly gray, ashy appearance. Overall, low clarity features will appear blended and not stark against each other. 

Medium Clarity

Medium clarity sits between high and low clarity. Features are neither boldly pigmented and sparkly, nor gray and cloudy. Very dark features, like almost-black hair and black-brown eyes, can be considered as medium clarity.

Putting Everything Together

If you’ve found that you have high contrast, warm-neutral undertone, and medium clarity (saturation), then you are likely a Dark Autumn.

If you meet most of the description of a Dark Autumn, but not all of them, these are some seasons that share similar attributes:

Dark Autumn Color Palette

The features of a Dark Autumn are high contrast, warm-neutral undertone, and medium clarity (saturation). The colors that will accentuate a Dark Autumn’s features will have the same attributes as their features. 

• They’ll be warm or slightly warm
• They’ll have a high contrast and typically be dark.
• They have medium saturation in the colors
• Think of dark, rich colors like scarlet, rust, deep gold, pine green, and chocolate.

Best Colors for Dark Autumn

These colors are likely to help you feel your best.

Secondary Colors for Dark Autumn

The colors listed previously aren’t the only colors that Dark Autumns can look awesome in. Even within the 12 seasons, every face is unique, and some individuals could shine more in some colors than others. Here are some color categories that you may want to experiment with to discover what additional colors make you feel your most radiant.

For Dark Autumns, secondary colors all stay in the warm and warm-neutral hues, but can lean bright and soft.

There are far more secondary colors out there, so feel free to experiment with other colors that fit the description.

Out-of-Season Colors for Dark Autumns

Even if a color is “out-of-season”, it doesn’t mean you can’t wear it. You can and should wear whatever colors and clothes that make you feel great. Out-of-season colors should be a helpful tool, but not cause you to throw out your favorite shirt.

Since these colors are less complementary for a Dark Autumn’s coloring, if you use these colors, you may want to wear them further from your face, like on shoes, bags, pants, and skirts. 

The most out-of-season colors will be cool and bright or cool and light.