Auburn hair color: light, chestnut and dark auburn

Auburn is a reddish brown, and it comes in light, chestnut, medium and dark versions. Tap a shade below to see its hex code and the color seasons whose palettes list it. Then check whether your own coloring points to one of them.

By Jane MitchellCertified color analystPublished Oct 23, 2026

The auburn shade finder

Shades run from light to dark. Tap one.

Light auburn

Chestnut auburn

Medium auburn

Dark auburn

Auburn / Rich copper brown

#8B4513 · L* 37 · medium auburn

The classic auburn: clearly red, clearly brown. Warm, and it leans orange and gold.

The palettes that list it:

True Autumn same shade
Deep Autumn same shade

Your hair, skin and eyes together decide which of them is yours.

Our example face against the True Autumn palette — Example face, not yours

Find your season from one selfie

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Free for your best and worst palette. All 12 in the full report.

Long loose waves of copper-brown auburn hair resting on pale linen in window light — An illustration made with an image model, not a photo of a real person or a real dye. The swatches in the finder are the measured ones.

Light auburn hair

Light auburn is the red-brown you notice in sunlight: warm, bright and not heavy. Our palettes hold 2 shades at this depth. Copper has far more color in it. Warm chestnut is closer to a warm brown with a red tint.

Warm chestnut#A67B5B · L* 55Soft Autumn
Copper#B5651D · L* 51True Spring True Autumn

Light auburn means L* 50 and up.

Chestnut auburn hair color

Chestnut auburn sits in the middle of the depth range. It is the shade people picture when they ask for auburn with a brown base: rich, a little red, and easy to wear every day.

Bright auburn#A85C32 · L* 47Bright Spring True Spring True Autumn
Golden auburn / Golden chestnut#A0522D · L* 44True Spring True Autumn Bright Spring

Chestnut auburn means L* 40 to under 50.

Medium auburn: the classic

This is the red-brown most people mean by the word auburn: clearly red, clearly brown, and a little darker than chestnut auburn.

Auburn / Rich copper brown#8B4513 · L* 37True Autumn Deep Autumn

Medium auburn means L* 33 to under 40.

Dark auburn hair color

Dark auburn is the deepest red-brown. Indoors it can pass for a rich brown. In daylight the red comes through.

Deep auburn#6B3A22 · L* 30Deep Autumn Bright Spring
Rich chestnut#5C3A21 · L* 28Bright Spring Deep Autumn Deep Winter
Mahogany brown#5C3317 · L* 26Deep Autumn Bright Spring

Dark auburn means L* under 33.

Which seasons suit auburn hair

Each of these seasons lists at least one auburn, copper or chestnut shade of its own: True Spring, Bright Spring, Soft Autumn, True Autumn and Deep Autumn. All of them are warm seasons. We call a shade a near color when a season's hair color is within a gap of 6 on the CIEDE2000 scale (a standard measure of how different two colors look side by side), which is why a shade can list a second or a third season.

No summer or winter palette holds an auburn shade of its own. Their chestnuts have almost no red in them: Cool chestnut (#75675C, Soft Summer), Cool chestnut (#5C4033, Deep Winter) and Cool chestnut (#3E3128, True Winter). If your coloring is cool and you want a hint of red, ask a colorist for that depth and keep the red very soft.

All the auburn shades, light to dark

Shade	Group	Hex	L*	Seasons
Warm chestnut	Light auburn	#A67B5B	55	Soft Autumn
Copper	Light auburn	#B5651D	51	True Spring, True Autumn
Bright auburn	Chestnut auburn	#A85C32	47	Bright Spring, True Spring, True Autumn
Golden auburn / Golden chestnut	Chestnut auburn	#A0522D	44	True Spring, True Autumn, Bright Spring
Auburn / Rich copper brown	Medium auburn	#8B4513	37	True Autumn, Deep Autumn
Deep auburn	Dark auburn	#6B3A22	30	Deep Autumn, Bright Spring
Rich chestnut	Dark auburn	#5C3A21	28	Bright Spring, Deep Autumn, Deep Winter
Mahogany brown	Dark auburn	#5C3317	26	Deep Autumn, Bright Spring

L* is lightness in the CIELAB color space, from 0 (black) to 100 (white). A higher number is a lighter shade. The hex codes are the ones in our season palettes, and the page does not add any others.

How to choose an auburn shade

Start from the depth of your own hair. A shade one or two steps from it is the easiest to get right.
Check your undertone. Warm skin carries red-brown easily. For cool skin, keep the shade deep and soft. The undertone checks take two minutes.
Look at the gap between your hair and your skin and eyes. A deeper auburn raises it, and a lighter one lowers it. The contrast level page shows where you sit.
Try the hair color quiz or read the hair color analysis guide for the five hair colors of your likely season.

What this shade finder cannot tell you

It cannot name your season. A hair shade points to two or three seasons. Your skin and eyes decide between them.
It cannot predict a dye. The color on the box mixes with the color your hair has now, so it looks different on each base. We show shade families, not a product, and we name no brand.
A screen changes colors. The same swatch looks warmer on one phone and cooler on another.
It only knows the shades in our twelve palettes. A strawberry blonde or a burgundy is not in them, so it is not here. How the analysis works and how often it is right.

How we built the finder

We read the five hair colors of each of our 12 season palettes. A color joins the auburn family when its hue is a red-brown (a CIELAB hue angle from 40° to 66°), it has real color strength (chroma of at least 20), and its name says auburn, copper, chestnut or mahogany. A second rule that uses only the color finds every shade named auburn, so the names do not hide anything.

We then sorted the shades by lightness into four groups and listed, for each shade, the seasons that hold it or a color within a gap of 6. The temperature label is the average undertone of those seasons.

How this is different from other color analysis tools

01
Your photo stays on your device
Many photo apps upload your selfie and read it on their server (see our comparison). Ours measures it in your browser. There is no upload.
02
The result is free
Your season and palette, with no account and no email. At least one app in our comparison takes payment before you see any result.
03
A close call says so
Every result names the runner-up season and how close the call was. Borderline is a result we print.
04
We publish our accuracy
We tuned the method on faces that experts had labelled by season, then tested it on 410 celebrity photos we collected. The results, misses included.

How the photo analysis works, step by step

Questions

What is auburn hair color?

Auburn is a reddish brown: more red than chestnut, more brown than copper. Our twelve season palettes list 8 shades in the red-brown family for hair, from a light copper to a dark mahogany. The one called plain Auburn is #8B4513.

What is the difference between auburn and chestnut hair?

Chestnut is a brown with a warm red tint, and auburn is clearly red. In our palettes the lighter Warm chestnut has about 27 units of color strength, and the Auburn has about 49. A chestnut auburn sits between the two: brown first, with a red glow in the light.

What is light auburn hair?

Light auburn hair is a red-brown on the light side. The lightest red-browns in our palettes are Warm chestnut and Copper. None of our palettes lists a lighter red-brown, so a strawberry blonde is outside this page.

What skin tone suits auburn hair?

Skin tone alone does not decide it. The palettes that list an auburn shade of their own are True Spring, Bright Spring, Soft Autumn, True Autumn and Deep Autumn, and every one of them is a warm season. If your skin leans cool, look at the cool chestnut section on this page, and let the free analysis read your undertone from a photo.

Is auburn a warm or a cool hair color?

Auburn is a warm color, because red-orange sits on the warm side of the color wheel. No summer or winter palette lists an auburn of its own. The Rich chestnut reads as neutral to warm in our data, because Bright Spring, Deep Autumn and Deep Winter all list a color near it.

Will the dye look like the shade on the box?

Not always. A dye mixes with the color your hair has now, so the same box looks different on dark brown, light brown and blonde hair. Going lighter than your natural color needs lightener first. The shades here are the families our palettes recommend, not a match for any product. Take them to a colorist and ask for the tone and the depth.

What you can do on this page

This page has an interactive auburn shade finder: 8 auburn, copper, chestnut and mahogany hair shades taken from the color season palettes, in four groups from light auburn to dark auburn, each with its hex code. A visitor taps a shade and sees its depth, whether it leans red or gold, and the two or three seasons whose hair colors match it, each linked to that season's hair color page. The page then offers the free photo analysis, which measures undertone, depth and clarity from one selfie in the browser, with no upload and no account. It names no dye brand and does not predict how a dye will look.