Soft Summer Color Palette: The Complete Guide

Soft summer is the season that gets described as "muted" so often that people forget how much is going on inside it. The soft summer color palette is cool, medium in depth and low in saturation: dusty rose, slate blue, mauve, sage, heather grey, colors that look like a landscape seen through a fine sea mist. If you have ever put on a bright fuchsia top and felt like the top walked into the room before you did, or noticed that pure black makes you look faintly unwell while a soft charcoal makes you look rested, you are very likely reading about yourself.

This guide goes further than a list of swatches. It explains what soft summer means in color terms, gives you a feature-by-feature description and five at-home tests to confirm it, walks through the full palette (including the yellows and browns everyone struggles with), covers the colors to avoid and why, and then translates all of it into a wardrobe, a makeup bag and a hair color you can trust. It also covers the things most guides skip: soft summer men, soft summers with dark hair or brown eyes, and the deep and light sub-variants of the season.

What is a soft summer?

Soft summer is one of the 17 seasons used in modern seasonal color analysis. It describes people whose natural coloring, meaning skin, hair and eyes taken together, is primarily muted and secondarily cool.

The order of those two words matters. The defining trait of a soft summer is softness: your features are low in contrast and low in chroma, with a greyed, smoky quality that never reads as vivid. Coolness comes second. You lean blue and pink rather than gold, but you are not icy the way a true summer or a cool winter is. In fact soft summer sits right on the border between summer and autumn, which is why it is so often confused with its warm twin, soft autumn, and why many soft summers can borrow a few colors from the autumn side without any trouble.

In the classic four-season system, soft summer did not exist as a separate category. It emerged when analysts realised that a large group of "summers" could not wear the clear, cool pastels of the original summer palette and looked far better in something dustier. Some systems still call it muted summer, which is arguably the more honest name. Soft summer, muted summer, and the soft summer color season all refer to the same coloring.

Where soft summer sits on the color wheel

Every season is defined by where it falls on three scales: hue, value and chroma. The soft summer color palette is defined mostly by the third.

Hue (temperature): how warm or cool you are. You are neutral-cool. There is a little more blue than yellow in your undertone, but not so much that warm neutrals like a soft mushroom or a rose-beige are off limits. This is why soft summers can wear both silver and a muted gold.
Value (depth): how light or dark you are. You are medium. Your hair, skin and eyes sit at roughly the same level of lightness, and nothing about your coloring is strikingly pale or strikingly dark.
Chroma (saturation): how bright or muted you are. This is your defining trait, and you sit at the very soft end of the scale. Of all 17 seasons, soft summer has the lowest tolerance for brightness. Your natural coloring is blended and greyed, so anything vivid overwhelms it instantly.

If you take one thing from this section, take this: soft summer is not about being cool. It is about being soft, with a cool lean. People who think of themselves as "a summer" and reach for clear, cool colors like periwinkle and fuchsia usually end up disappointed. Your version of periwinkle is a dusty, greyed one, and your version of fuchsia is a muted raspberry.

Soft summer characteristics: how to know if you are one

Here is what soft summer coloring looks like, feature by feature, followed by five tests you can do at home in daylight.

Skin

Neutral to neutral-cool, from fair to tan and into deeper olive and brown skin tones. The tell-tale quality is an ashy, slightly greyed cast rather than a golden or peachy one. Some soft summers have a faint pink flush, especially on the cheeks, and freckles are common in the fairer range. The soft summer skin tone tends to look flat or sallow next to warm colors like camel and orange, and it tends to disappear next to bright colors. Next to a dusty rose or a slate blue, the same skin looks even, calm and fresh.

Olive skin deserves a special mention because it is so often mistyped. Many olive-skinned people are told they are autumns because olive "looks warm". In practice, olive skin has a green-grey cast that sits beautifully with the greyed colors of the soft summer palette, and a surprising number of olive-skinned people are soft summers.

Eyes

Grey, grey-blue, grey-green, soft hazel, or a muted, cool brown. Whatever the color, it looks smoky and slightly out of focus rather than crisp. Soft summer eyes often have a "cracked glass" or "spokes of a wheel" pattern in the iris and a soft grey ring around the outside. Soft summer brown eyes are common in deeper skin tones and are a cool, matte brown rather than a warm amber or a bright chocolate. If your eyes have been described as "blue-ish grey" or "some sort of hazel" and nobody can agree, that vagueness is itself a soft summer trait.

Hair

Ash blonde, dark ash blonde, light to medium ash brown, and cool medium brown. The common thread is a lack of warmth: no gold, no copper, no honey. Soft summer hair often looks "mousy" in indoor light and develops ash blonde or cool beige highlights in the sun rather than golden ones. Soft summer dark hair does exist, particularly in people of Asian, Middle Eastern or Latin American heritage, where a cool, soft black-brown pairs with muted skin and eyes. Soft summer brunettes and soft summer red hair are rarer, but a cool, muted auburn or a greyed strawberry blonde can belong here.

Contrast

Low to medium. Take a black and white photo of yourself and look at the tonal range: hair, skin and eyes all sit around the same middle grey and blend into one another. This is why a black blazer over a white shirt looks like a costume on a soft summer. The contrast of the outfit is far higher than the contrast of the face inside it.

Five tests to do at home

Do these in natural daylight, without makeup, in front of a mirror.

The silver and gold test. Hold silver jewelry against your face, then gold. A soft summer looks good in both because of the neutral part, but silver looks a little better: the skin looks clearer and the eyes brighter. If gold clearly wins and silver makes you look pale, you are probably on the autumn side.

The black and charcoal test. Drape something pure black near your face, then something soft charcoal or dark greyed navy. Black should make you look a little drawn, with harder shadows under the eyes and a slightly greenish tinge to the skin. Charcoal should make your face look calmer and more even. If black genuinely looks great on you, you are likely a winter, and a deep or bright one.

The white and soft white test. Pure optic white against your face, then a soft white or light dove grey. On a soft summer the optic white takes over and the face fades behind it. The soft white lets the face come forward again.

The grey test, for soft summer versus soft autumn. This is the one that settles the most common confusion in color analysis. Hold a plain medium grey near your face and look at your eyes. If they turn greyish, even if they are green or hazel, you are very likely a soft summer. If they stay clearly green, olive or golden-hazel against the grey, you are leaning soft autumn.

The rose and peach test, a second check for the same question. Hold a dusty rose fabric near your face, then a muted peach. On a soft summer the rose makes the skin look clean and the peach makes it look slightly yellow or "dirty". On a soft autumn it is the reverse: the peach looks like it belongs, and the rose looks slightly cold. If both look fine, you are close to the border and can borrow from both palettes.

If you want to skip the guesswork, the free MySwatches palette quiz walks you through this with your own photos and tells you which of the 17 seasons matches. Take the free palette quiz

Soft summer color palette swatches

Here are the soft summer color palette swatches, organized by how you actually get dressed: neutrals first, because they will be most of your closet, then the colors you build around them, then the two families that give soft summers the most trouble.

Soft summer neutrals

Soft summer neutrals are greys, greyed blues and cool, rosy browns. Think of driftwood, wet slate and the soft grey-brown of a mourning dove.

• Lights: soft white, oyster white, light dove grey, pearl grey, cool sand, rose-beige, mushroom.
• Mids: heather grey, medium grey, greige, cool taupe, dusty mauve-brown, faded denim, soft pewter.
• Darks: charcoal, slate, greyed navy, cocoa (the cool, rosy kind), deep mauve-brown, soft blackened plum.

Your version of black is charcoal or a dusty, greyed navy. Your version of white is soft white or oyster. Swap those two anchors and you have solved half of the problem before you buy a single colored piece. The soft summer browns are worth a note on their own, because "brown" is a warm word and most browns in stores are warm. Yours are cool: rose-brown, cocoa with a pink cast, mushroom, cool taupe. If a brown looks like caramel, chocolate or leather, it belongs to an autumn.

Soft summer colors by family

• Soft summer pinks: dusty rose, powder pink, rose quartz, old rose, muted raspberry, antique pink, soft orchid. Dusty rose is the single most useful color in the whole palette and works next to every neutral above.
• Soft summer reds: raspberry, soft burgundy, muted cranberry, dusty cherry, cool brick (the pink-leaning kind), deep rosewood. There is no true red in the palette; your red always has either grey or blue mixed in.
• Purples: mauve, dusty lavender, heather, wisteria, muted plum, soft amethyst, greyed violet, soft aubergine. Mauve is your second workhorse after dusty rose.
• Soft summer blues: dusty blue, slate blue, greyed periwinkle, faded denim, chambray, cadet blue, soft French blue, steel blue, muted teal. Soft summer blues are the biggest family in the palette and the easiest to find in stores.
• Soft summer greens: sage, eucalyptus, seafoam, greyed jade, soft pine, spruce, muted emerald, cool mint, blue-green. Sage green is the soft summer green of the moment and it deserves the attention: it flatters almost every soft summer.
• Soft summer yellows and oranges: soft lemon chiffon, greyed straw, muted buttercup, a pale cool banana. See the section below on why these are hard.

The through-line of the soft summer color palette is that every color looks like it has been mixed with a drop of grey. If a color looks like it came straight from the tube, it is too bright for you. If it looks like it was left out in the sun for a summer and has gently faded, it is probably yours.

Soft summer yellow, the hardest color in the palette

Yellow is the color soft summers search for more than any other, because it is genuinely difficult. Yellow is warm by nature and bright by nature, and soft summer is cool and muted, so most yellows fail on both counts at once. Mustard, gold, lemon, marigold and anything called "sunshine" will make a soft summer look sallow.

The soft summer palette yellow shades that do work are the ones that have been cooled and greyed almost to the point of not being yellow anymore: a pale lemon chiffon with a touch of grey, a soft straw, a muted primrose, a dusty buttercup. Think of the yellow of a dried grass stem, not a daffodil. Wear it in small doses, away from the face or as a print accent, and pair it with dusty blue or sage so that it reads as a soft contrast rather than a warm one. The same rule covers orange: a soft summer's orange is a greyed, cool-leaning salmon or a dusty apricot with pink in it, and even that is a rare piece rather than a staple.

Sister palettes, and what you can borrow

Soft summer has two direct neighbors on the seasonal flow and one close cousin, and you can borrow from all three.

From true summer, the cooler and slightly clearer side: lichen blue, cool lavender, powder blue, a soft moonlit mauve. These share your coolness. Pick the dustiest, least clear version.

From soft autumn, the warmer side: dusk blue, a warm sage, greyed teal, rose-brown, oyster. These share your softness. Pick the coolest version of each and skip anything with visible gold in it.

From light summer, the lighter cousin: pastel rose, light heather, pale seafoam. These share your neutral-cool temperature. Pick the ones with the most grey in them, and keep them for tops and layers where a little extra lightness will not wash out the rest of you.

The rule for borrowing is always the same. Take the softest, most muted version of the neighboring color. If it looks vivid or clean on the hanger, put it back.

Soft summer colors to avoid, and why

Every soft summer has a list of "worst colors", and the list is fairly consistent, because what works against you is anything that is warm, bright or high-contrast.

• Pure black: too dark and too stark. It hollows out the face, deepens shadows and can give soft summer skin a greenish tinge.
• Optic white: too bright and too clean. It overpowers your coloring and makes the face look tired by comparison.
• Orange, tangerine, rust: warm and saturated, the two things you are not. Orange is the fastest way to make a soft summer look flushed and sallow at the same time.
• Mustard, gold, marigold: the warm yellows. They pull the yellow out of your skin and leave it looking dull.
• Bright red, tomato red, lipstick red: too clear and too warm. Your reds are raspberry and burgundy.
• Fuchsia, hot pink, magenta: these are cool, so people assume they work. They are far too saturated. Fuchsia on a soft summer looks like a highlighter pen.
• Royal blue, cobalt, electric blue: same problem. Cool, but blindingly bright. Your blue is slate.
• Lime green, kelly green, emerald at full strength: too clear and, in the case of lime, too warm.
• Camel, caramel, warm chocolate, khaki: the classic autumn neutrals. They make a soft summer look yellowish and older.
• Neon anything: obvious, but worth saying.

None of these colors is forbidden. If you love one, wear it away from your face, in trousers, a skirt, shoes or a bag, and keep your best colors at the neckline where they reflect onto your skin. A soft summer in charcoal trousers and a dusty rose top can carry a cobalt handbag without any harm at all.

Soft summer deep and soft summer light

Because soft summer is a large season, some 16-season and 24-season systems split it into two sub-variants, and you will see the terms "soft summer deep" and "soft summer light" used in color analysis communities. They are not separate seasons. They describe which end of the soft summer range you sit at.

Soft summer deep (also called deep soft summer or soft summer dark) describes soft summers with medium-dark ash brown or cool black-brown hair, deeper skin, and eyes that lean grey-brown or muted dark brown. Your best colors are the darker half of the palette: slate, greyed navy, soft burgundy, muted plum, spruce, deep mauve-brown. You can wear charcoal near the face with ease, and the lightest pastels can look a little washed out on you. This group borders soft autumn on one side and soft winter or deep winter on the other, which is why "soft summer vs deep winter" is a real question for some people. The difference is chroma: a deep winter can wear black and a clear jewel tone, and a soft summer deep cannot.

Soft summer light describes soft summers with ash blonde or light ash brown hair, fair skin and light grey or grey-blue eyes. You lean toward the lighter half of the palette: powder pink, dusty lavender, soft seafoam, light dove grey, chambray. Charcoal is still your dark neutral, but you may find that a medium grey or a greyed navy is more flattering near the face than the deepest shades, and you can borrow a little more freely from light summer.

The practical point is this. Once you know you are a soft summer, look at your own depth and favor the half of the palette that matches it. A soft summer deep in powder pink from head to toe looks faded; a soft summer light in head-to-toe slate looks heavy. Mix the two halves, with your own depth as the anchor, and everything falls into place.

Soft summer versus the seasons it gets confused with

Getting the season right is what makes the palette work, and soft summer has more look-alikes than almost any other season because it sits at a crossroads.

Soft summer vs soft autumn

This is the classic mix-up, and it is the one most people are searching for when they ask "am I soft summer or soft autumn". Both seasons are muted and medium in depth, so the palettes overlap heavily. The difference is temperature. Soft summer colors carry more grey and blue; soft autumn colors carry more walnut, honey, beige and gold. A soft summer looks better in silver, dusty rose and slate blue; a soft autumn looks better in gold, dusty peach and olive. In hair, a soft summer goes ash and a soft autumn goes honey. The grey test and the rose and peach test above are the fastest ways to settle it. If you are still torn after both, you are close to the border, and the good news is that you can wear the shared colors, which are the greyed teals, dusty roses, oyster whites and cool taupes, without worrying.

True summer vs soft summer (cool summer vs soft summer)

True summer, which some systems call cool summer, is the purely cool season in the middle of the summer family. It is cooler and clearer than soft summer. A true summer can wear a clean periwinkle, a soft fuchsia, a cool raspberry and a true lavender; on a soft summer those same colors look slightly too bright and too cold at once. The tell is chroma. If a clear, cool pastel makes your face light up, you are a true summer. If it makes your face look faded and the color look loud, you are a soft summer. In hair, a true summer often has clearly ash hair and clearly blue or grey eyes; a soft summer's features are a little more blended and a little harder to describe.

Light summer vs soft summer

Light summer is lighter and slightly clearer, and its defining trait is lightness rather than softness. A light summer has fair skin, light blonde or very light ash brown hair and light eyes, and looks best in pastels: baby blue, pale pink, light lavender. A soft summer is medium rather than light, and in those pastels a soft summer looks a little washed out, as if the color had erased them. If you are not sure, hold a pale pastel pink next to a dusty rose. The light summer glows in the pastel; the soft summer glows in the dusty rose. They are not the same season, even though "light" and "soft" sound similar.

Soft summer vs winter

Fewer people confuse these, but it happens, usually to soft summer deeps with dark hair. The question comes up as soft summer vs deep winter, or occasionally soft summer vs cool winter. The answer is simple: winters can wear black, optic white and saturated jewel tones, and they look better in them than in anything muted. If black makes you look sharp and awake, you are a winter. If black makes you look tired and charcoal makes you look better, you are a soft summer, however dark your hair is.

Building a soft summer wardrobe

How to combine your colors

Low contrast is the guiding principle for soft summer outfits, because low contrast is what your own coloring has. Soft summer color palette clothing works best when it looks like a gradient rather than a collision.

• Best: tonal and monochrome outfits built from several shades of one family. Dusty rose with raspberry. Slate blue with chambray. Sage with spruce. Heather grey with charcoal.
• Good: neighboring colors at the same depth. Mauve with dusty blue. Sage with seafoam. Muted plum with greyed navy. Dusty rose with cool taupe.
• Good: one neutral plus one accent at a similar depth. Charcoal with raspberry. Soft white with sage. Greyed navy with dusty rose. Mushroom with slate blue.
• Avoid: strong contrast, especially complementary pairs like blue with orange or purple with yellow, and anything that puts black and white together.

A quick check before you leave the house: squint at the mirror. If one piece jumps forward and everything else, including your face, falls back, the contrast is too high. If everything blends into one soft image with your face in the middle, you have it right.

A soft summer capsule wardrobe

If you are starting from scratch or rebuilding, these fifteen pieces cover most of life and combine with each other in almost any order. Every piece is in the soft summer color palette, so there are no wrong pairings.

• A charcoal blazer and a greyed navy blazer (one of each, or one in whichever you wear more).
• Charcoal trousers and greyed navy trousers.
• Mid-wash or faded denim jeans, and a chambray shirt.
• A soft white shirt and a soft white t-shirt. Not optic white.
• A dusty rose knit and a sage knit.
• A heather grey sweatshirt or cardigan.
• A mauve or muted plum blouse for the days you want a little more color.
• A slate blue dress, the soft summer answer to the little black dress.
• A raspberry or soft burgundy piece for evenings.
• A cool taupe or mushroom trench or coat.
• Shoes and bag in cool taupe, dove grey or greyed navy rather than black.

Soft summer dresses deserve a note. A dress is a large block of color close to the face, so it is the piece where choosing wrong costs you the most. Dusty rose, slate blue, sage, mauve and greyed navy are the safest dress colors, and a soft floral print in those shades is the safest pattern.

Denim

Denim is a gift to soft summers, because faded indigo is basically a soft summer blue. Mid-wash, light-wash, faded and grey-wash denim all work. Skip bleached white denim, inky raw denim and black denim, which introduce the same contrast problem as black and white clothing.

Patterns and prints

The best prints for a soft summer use only soft summer colors, at low contrast, in soft shapes: watercolor florals, ditsy florals, faded botanicals, brushstrokes, feathers, tie-dye in muted tones, tonal stripes, small irregular dots. The elements should be small and loosely arranged rather than large and regimented. A print with one small element outside your palette is fine if the element is minor. What to skip is sharp geometry, large bold color-blocking, high-contrast stripes, and anything with black lines or an optic white background.

Metals and soft summer jewelry

Finish matters more than metal. Brushed, matte, satin, hammered and antiqued finishes flatter you; high-shine, mirror-polished and glittery finishes do not.

• Best metals: silver, brushed silver, white gold, platinum, pewter, and a soft, pink-toned rose gold.
• Also fine: muted or antiqued gold, as long as it is not orange, bright or heavy. The question "can a soft summer wear gold" comes up a lot, and the honest answer is yes, if it is a soft, pale, matte gold, and no if it is a bright yellow gold.
• Use with care: blackened or gunmetal finishes, which can read too harsh, and copper, which is almost always too warm.

Stones and materials for soft summer jewelry: rose quartz, moonstone, grey or lavender pearls (skip stark white pearls), amethyst, labradorite, blue lace agate, aquamarine in its softer tones, smoky quartz, grey mother of pearl, soft opal. Materials: frosted glass, brushed metal, grey suede, pale washed wood.

Glasses: frames in slate, grey, mauve, dusty blue, a cool grey tortoiseshell, or brushed silver metal. Avoid heavy black frames, which draw a hard line across the softest part of your face.

For work

A soft summer's professional wardrobe does not need black to look serious. Build it on charcoal, greyed navy, slate and cool taupe for suits and trousers, with soft white, dove grey, dusty rose and sage for shirts and blouses. Accent with raspberry, muted plum or dusty blue. A greyed navy suit with a soft white shirt looks as authoritative as a black one on anyone, and on you it looks better.

Weddings and occasions

• As a bride: soft white, oyster, pearl, pale silver-grey, blush and a very pale dusty rose all outperform stark white. Cool ivory works; warm ivory and champagne can look slightly yellow on you.
• As a guest: dusty rose, slate blue, mauve, sage, muted plum, raspberry, soft burgundy for winter weddings.
• For the groom or a suit: charcoal, greyed navy, slate, cool medium grey, with a soft white or pale dusty blue shirt.

Soft summer for men

Almost everything written about soft summer is aimed at women, but the season is just as common in men and the rules are identical. A soft summer man has ash or cool brown hair, neutral-cool skin and grey, blue-grey or muted brown eyes, and he tends to look tired in the black t-shirt and crisp white shirt that make up most men's wardrobes. The fix is small. Swap black for charcoal and greyed navy, swap optic white for soft white and light grey, and choose denim in a faded wash. For color, slate blue, dusty blue, sage, heather grey and muted burgundy are the easiest wins: a slate blue shirt with charcoal trousers, a sage polo with faded jeans, a soft burgundy knit over a light grey tee. Metals should be brushed silver or gunmetal on the softer side, and a cool grey tortoiseshell or slate frame beats black glasses every time. Soft summer men who wear beards will find that the beard reads ash or grey rather than red, which is one more clue that the season is right.

How to use your palette in the store

Soft summer is the hardest palette to shop for from memory, because so many colors are "almost" right. The dusty rose that turns out to be a warm peach under the changing room lights. The sage that arrives closer to olive. The "navy" that is really a bright royal blue. Muted colors are the ones the eye is worst at judging on its own, and store lighting makes it worse.

That is exactly what the MySwatches Personal Swatch Card is for. It is a transparent, credit-card-sized card printed with your soft summer color palette, so you hold it directly against the fabric and see at once whether the color belongs. Because the card is see-through, you are comparing the actual dye to the actual shade rather than a photo to a memory. It is waterproof, scratch resistant, and lives in your wallet. See the Soft Summer card

Soft summer makeup

The mistake most soft summers make with makeup is one of two extremes. Either they copy a true summer, with cool pink blush and icy lavender shadow that looks chalky on muted skin, or they copy a "no makeup" trend and end up with warm bronzer and peach gloss that turns everything sallow. Soft summer makeup should look like your own coloring with the volume raised a notch: cool, dusty, blended, never sharp.

Foundation and base

Neutral to neutral-cool, with a rosy or beige rather than golden base, matched in daylight. Avoid anything labelled golden, warm or honey, which turns yellow on you, and be cautious with pink-based foundations that are too pink, because they can look doll-like on muted skin. Skip warm bronzer altogether. If you want dimension, use a cool, greyish taupe contour, applied very lightly. Highlighter should be a soft pearl, pale pink or silvery champagne with a satin finish, never a gold or a frost.

Blush

Dusty rose, mauve, cool pink, soft plum, muted berry, rose-brown. A cream or liquid formula sheered out gives the most natural result because your coloring is blended and a wash respects that. Avoid peach, coral and anything with orange in it.

Lips and soft summer lipstick colors

Your best soft summer lipstick colors are the palette in miniature: rose nude, mauve, dusty rose, rosewood, muted berry, raspberry, soft plum, cool "my lips but better" pink. For a bold lip, choose a soft burgundy, a dusty cranberry or a muted raspberry rather than a true red. The question of soft summer red lipstick comes up constantly, and the answer is that a cool, blue-based, slightly greyed red, one that reads as raspberry or wine in daylight, can be beautiful; a bright warm red will float on top of your face like a sticker. Satin, cream and sheer finishes suit you better than high gloss or flat matte, and a lip liner one shade deeper than your own lips does more for a soft summer than any bright color.

Eyes and the soft summer eyeshadow palette

• Shadows: cool taupe, mushroom, dusty rose, mauve, heather, soft plum, slate, grey-blue, dove grey, greyed lavender, a cool soft brown. These work alone or layered, and a matte or satin finish is the most flattering. The ideal soft summer eyeshadow palette is a small quad of taupe, dusty rose, mauve and slate. Avoid warm browns, bronze, gold and copper.
• Liner: charcoal, slate grey, soft navy, muted plum, cool dark brown. Harsh black liner is the single fastest way to make a soft summer look tired, and a smudged charcoal gives the same definition without the hardness.
• Mascara: brown-black, soft black or charcoal. A true inky black can be a lot; if you use it, keep it to the top lashes.
• Brows: cool taupe, ash brown or soft grey-brown, filled lightly. Skip warm brown pencils, which turn orange on ash brows, and skip the sharply defined dark brow, which introduces contrast your face does not have.

Soft summer nail colors

Mauve, dusty rose, rose nude, greyed lavender, slate, dove grey, muted plum, mulberry, soft burgundy, sage, dusty blue, a sheer milky pink. Soft summer nails look best with a low-contrast, "hand looks well rested" quality. Skip optic white, bright red, coral, neon and anything with gold shimmer.

The MySwatches Personal Makeup Card takes the same soft summer palette and translates it into lipstick, blush and eyeshadow shades, so you can hold it up to a tester and know.

Soft summer hair color

Your natural hair is already in your palette, which is why the best hair color for soft summer stays close to nature: ash-toned, muted and multi-dimensional, with no gold, copper or brass anywhere.

• Best: ash blonde, dark ash blonde, beige blonde, mushroom blonde, light ash brown, cool medium brown, mushroom brown, smoky bronde, soft cool espresso for soft summer deeps.
• Good for a change: a greyed rose-brown, a cool "cold brew" brunette, a muted silver-blonde, or a soft ashy lavender or grey-lilac gloss for something playful. These are the soft summer hair color ideas that stylists actually recommend, because they add interest without adding warmth.
• Avoid: golden blonde, honey and caramel (too warm), platinum and icy white blonde (too bright and too light, and they make the face look faded), warm chocolate and mahogany (too warm and too rich), copper and cherry red (far too saturated), and blue-black or jet black (too dark and too high-contrast).

If you highlight, ask for a cool, low-contrast balayage in ash or beige blonde, blended softly through the lengths rather than chunky bright pieces at the face. Ask your colorist for "no warmth" and a toner in a cool or neutral base, and use a purple or blue shampoo to keep brass away between visits. For soft summer blonde hair colors, "mushroom blonde" is the phrase that gets you closest to right in one sentence; for brunettes, "cool ash brown, no red".

Soft summers have one real advantage over other seasons: they grey beautifully. Because your hair is already ashy and low in pigment, incoming grey blends in rather than fighting your color, and a fully silver or salt-and-pepper soft summer is often more striking than a dyed one. If you go grey, keep it cool and soft, avoid a stark white, and revisit your palette, because a lighter, greyer frame around the face usually makes the dustier, lighter colors look even better.

Soft summer celebrities and examples

Nobody has draped these people in person, and celebrity typing from photos is never certain, especially with a season as subtle as this one, so treat these soft summer examples as a visual reference rather than a verdict. The names that come up most often in soft summer discussions:

• Sarah Jessica Parker: the classic reference. Ash blonde hair, neutral-cool skin, grey-blue eyes, and a face that looks softer in dusty pink than in any of the bright colors she has worn on screen.
• Rachel McAdams: cool medium brown hair, greyish blue eyes and muted skin, and famously at her best in dusty blue and mauve.
• Adele: low-contrast, ash-toned coloring that has looked most at home in the greyed navy, soft black-plum and muted rose she tends to wear.
• Dakota Johnson: cool brown hair, grey-blue eyes and a smoky, blended quality that reads as soft summer deep.
• Emily Blunt: ash brown hair, grey-blue eyes and neutral-cool skin, often cited as a soft summer who wears slate and dusty blue well.
• Ellen Pompeo: ash blonde over cool, muted skin, a frequent soft summer example.
• Kevin Costner and Hugh Grant: the two most common examples of soft summer men. Both have ash hair going soft grey, cool skin and muted blue or grey eyes.
• Jennifer Aniston: the contested one. She is typed soft summer at least as often as soft autumn, and the debate is instructive: her coloring sits so close to the border that both palettes look reasonable on her. If you have been told two different things by two different analysts, she is proof that it happens to everyone.

What they have in common is not a hair color or a skin tone. It is softness: no feature fights another, the whole face reads as blended and slightly cool, and the person looks more like themselves in a muted color than in a bright one.

Beyond the closet

Once you know your palette, it tends to spread. Soft summers often find that the colors that flatter their face are the ones they want to live with: a sage bedroom, a dusty blue sofa, dove grey walls, pale washed oak, linen in soft white and mauve, a slate-tiled bathroom. It is not a coincidence. Colors that harmonize with you are easier on the eye, yours and everyone else's, and a room in your palette photographs you well too. It is also worth knowing that the soft summer color palette is one of the most popular home palettes in existence, so the paint charts are on your side.

Frequently asked questions about soft summer

Is soft summer cool or warm?

Soft summer is neutral-cool. The dominant quality is softness (low saturation); coolness is secondary. You lean blue and pink rather than gold, but only slightly, which is why you can wear both silver and a muted gold and why you can borrow a few colors from soft autumn.

What colors are in the soft summer color palette?

Muted, cool, medium-depth colors: dusty rose, mauve, raspberry, soft burgundy, muted plum, dusty lavender, slate blue, dusty blue, faded denim, greyed periwinkle, sage, eucalyptus, seafoam, spruce and a very soft greyed lemon, on a base of soft white, dove grey, heather grey, cool taupe, mushroom, charcoal and greyed navy. Every color in the palette looks as if it had a drop of grey mixed in.

What colors look best on a soft summer?

The soft summer best colors are the mid-depth, dusty ones: dusty rose, slate blue, mauve, sage, raspberry and greyed navy. If you only ever bought those six colors, in soft white and charcoal for neutrals, you would never wear anything wrong.

What are the worst colors for a soft summer?

Pure black, optic white, orange, mustard and gold, bright red, fuchsia and hot pink, royal and electric blue, lime green, and the warm autumn neutrals like camel and caramel. In one sentence: if a color is bright, warm or both, it is probably not yours.

Can a soft summer wear black?

Not well near the face. Black adds shadows and makes soft summer skin look greyish or tired. Swap it for charcoal, greyed navy, slate or a deep mauve-brown, all of which read as "dark and serious" without the drain. Black trousers, shoes or a bag are fine; it is the neckline that matters. If you must wear black up top, break it with a soft white or dusty rose scarf, or choose a washed, faded black rather than a fresh one.

Can a soft summer wear navy?

Yes, and it is one of your best dark neutrals, provided it is a greyed, dusty navy rather than a bright or inky one. Think of a well-worn navy sweater rather than a brand new navy blazer. A muted navy is a far better stand-in for black than black is.

Can a soft summer wear gold?

A soft, pale, matte or brushed gold, yes. A bright, orange-toned, high-shine yellow gold, no. Silver, white gold and a pink-toned rose gold are safer, but the neutral side of your coloring means muted gold is not off the table.

Can a soft summer wear orange?

Almost never near the face. The one exception is a very greyed, pink-leaning salmon or dusty apricot, worn as an accent. Orange in trousers, a skirt or a bag is fine.

What is the difference between soft summer and soft autumn?

Temperature. Both are muted and medium in depth, but soft summer is cool (more grey and blue in the colors) and soft autumn is warm (more gold, beige and walnut). Soft summers look better in silver, dusty rose and slate; soft autumns in gold, dusty peach and olive. In hair, one goes ash and the other goes honey. The grey test settles it in a minute.

What is the difference between soft summer and true summer?

Chroma. True summer (also called cool summer) is cooler and clearer, and can wear clean cool pastels and a soft fuchsia. Soft summer is more muted and slightly less cool, and those same colors look too bright and too cold on it. A soft summer's periwinkle is dusty; a true summer's is clear.

Is light summer the same as soft summer?

No. Light summer is lighter and slightly clearer, and its defining trait is lightness; soft summer is medium in depth and its defining trait is softness. Light summers glow in pastels, soft summers glow in dusty mid-tones. They share a neutral-cool temperature and a few colors, but they are not the same season.

What is the best lipstick color for a soft summer?

Rose nude, mauve, dusty rose, rosewood and muted berry. For drama, a soft burgundy, dusty cranberry or muted raspberry rather than a true red.

What hair colors suit a soft summer?

Ash blonde, beige blonde, mushroom blonde, light ash brown, cool medium brown, mushroom brown and, for deeper soft summers, a cool soft espresso. Avoid golden, honey, caramel, copper, platinum and blue-black.

How does soft summer color analysis work?

Soft summer color analysis looks at three things: hue, value and chroma. Hue is temperature (soft summer is neutral-cool, leaning blue and pink rather than gold). Value is depth (soft summer sits in the medium range, with little contrast between hair, skin and eyes). Chroma is saturation, and it is the defining trait: soft summer coloring is muted and greyed rather than clear or bright. A soft summer is cool-leaning and medium-depth, but soft above all. That is why the fastest way to confirm it at home is not a single test but a few side-by-side drapes (silver vs. gold, black vs. charcoal, optic white vs. soft white, grey against the eyes, rose vs. peach), because muted colors are much easier to judge next to your skin than to guess from memory.

Is soft summer a rare season?

No. Soft summer is one of the most common seasons, particularly among people of Northern and Eastern European heritage with ash hair and grey or blue-grey eyes, and it is far more common in olive and deeper skin tones than most guides suggest. Because its coloring is subtle, it is also one of the most frequently misdiagnosed, usually as soft autumn, light summer or true summer.

Does my color season change as I get older?

Your season is set mostly by your undertone, which does not change. What can shift is which specific colors flatter you most, especially once hair greys. Most soft summers stay soft summer for life and find that greying hair, which is already in their palette, makes the lighter and dustier colors look even better.

Find your season, then carry it with you

If this guide sounded like a description of you, the next step is to confirm it. The free MySwatches palette quiz uses your own photos to place you in one of the 17 seasons. Take the free palette quiz

And once you know, the Soft Summer Personal Swatch Card puts the whole soft summer color palette from this guide in your wallet, transparent so you can hold it up to any fabric, waterproof and scratch resistant so it lasts. No more guessing under changing room lights. See the Soft Summer card