Soft Summer Season Guide

If you’re a Soft Summer, you glow in cool-neutral, medium-contrast shades with muted, low clarity. Think soft jade, slate blue, soft amethyst, dusty pink, and pewter.

Already know you’re a Soft Summer? See your colors!

Are You a Soft Summer?

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

Contrast

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

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

• Medium-depth hair and medium-depth eyes
• Light or fair skin paired with medium-depth hair or dark 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 Soft Summer, 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-brown, ashy browns, and ashy blondes are neutral-toned which matches Soft Summers.

Slightly warm

Red, auburn, and red-leaning browns are slightly warm, but can be Soft Summers.

Warm

Ginger, copper, and golden blondes are likely too warm and pigmented to be a Soft Summer.

Putting Skin and Hair Undertone Together

Soft Summers 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. Soft Summers have low clarity, meaning most of their features will have the soft, gray, blended nature of low 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 medium contrast, cool-neutral undertone, and low clarity (saturation), then you are likely a Soft Summer.

If you meet most of the description of a Soft Summer, but not all of them, these are some seasons that share similar attributes.

Soft Summer Color Palette

The features of a Soft Summer are medium contrast, cool-neutral, and low clarity (saturation). The colors that will accentuate a Soft Summer's features will have the same attributes as their features. 

• They’ll be cool or somewhat cool
• They’ll have a medium contrast and be moderately dark
• They have low saturation in the colors
• Think of soft, muted colors like soft jade, slate blue, soft amethyst, dusty pink, and pewter

Best Colors for Soft Summer

These colors are likely to help you feel your best.

Secondary Colors for Soft Summer

The colors listed previously aren’t the only colors that Soft Summers 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 Soft Summers, secondary colors all stay in the cool and cool-neutral hues, but can lean light or dark and bold.

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 Soft Summers

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 Soft Summer’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 and bright or light and saturated.