Dark Winter Season Guide

If you’re a Dark Winter, you shine in cool-leaning, high-contrast, deeper colors with medium-to-high saturation. Think emerald, dark teal, raspberry, dark indigo, and true black.

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

Are You a Dark Winter?

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

Contrast

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

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

• Dark brown to black hair
• Medium‑dark hair and dark eyes that stand out against fair or light‑medium skin
• Medium to deep skin where the whites of the eyes and teeth look bright and crisp

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 Winter, you’re looking for a very small amount of warmth (orange tone) in your skin, indicating a cool-neutral undertone.

Cool-Neutral

A cool-neutral undertone will show a bit of warmth, but also likely lean pink, yellow, or gray, rather than visibly orange.

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.

Cool

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

Warm and Warm-Neutral

If your skin shows more warmth and leans more toward orange, you likely have a warm or warm-neutral 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 or dark brown hair
• Medium‑dark hair that looks ashy, smoky, or neutral brown

Slightly warm

• Medium-dark hair that shows hints of yellow (blonde/golden) or red (auburn)

Unlikely to be a Dark Winter

• Copper, golden blonde, red, and very obviously orange-tinted hair is likely too warm.
• Blonde hair is unlikely to provide enough contrast.

Putting Skin and Hair Undertone Together

Dark Winters have a cool-neutral undertone, meaning they have very little 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 Winters 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 treated as medium clarity.

Putting Everything Together

If you’ve found that you have high contrast, a cool-neutral undertone, and medium clarity, you are indeed a Dark Winter.

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

Dark Winter Color Palette

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

• They’ll lean cool, but don’t need to be icy. 
• They’ll have a high contrast and typically be dark.
• They have medium to high saturation in the colors. Think of rich, dark colors like emerald, raspberry, midnight blue, and indigo.

Best Colors for Dark Winters

These colors are likely to help you feel your best.

Secondary Colors for Dark Winters

The colors listed previously aren’t the only colors that Dark Winters 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 Winters, secondary colors all stay in the cool or cool-neutral hues, but can lean lighter and brighter, or darker and a bit muted.

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 Winters

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 Winter’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 very warm or very low saturation.