One of the three autumn color palettes
Soft Autumn color palette
Warm but dusty, the colors of a dried bouquet.
20 colors to wear
Not sure you are a Soft Autumn?
Free for your best and worst palette. All 12 in the full report.
All 20 Soft Autumn colors, with hex codes
The colors that work hardest for Soft Autumn, each with its hex code so you can match it exactly when you shop.
- Salmon#D98A76
- Soft terracotta#C4705C
- Muted rust#B5654A
- Warm rose beige#C98F7A
- Dusty brick#B07C7C
- Soft mulberry#A86F7E
- Warm mushroom#8E7C6E
- Soft gold#C4A76A
- Wheat#D6BC7E
- Moss gold#A89B5C
- Sage green#87905F
- Olive#6E7D5B
- Muted forest#5E7A6B
- Soft teal#6F9188
- Dusty blue#7E9AA5
- Slate blue#5F7386
- Soft plum rose#B58F9E
- Soft peach beige#DCC0A8
- Pecan#96795F
- Rosewood#C1A192
Neutrals to build on
Buy these first. Neutrals are what you wear most, and they are where most wardrobe mistakes happen.
- Soft cream#F0E8D8
- Oat#D3C3A8
- Camel#B79B75
- Warm taupe#8C7A62
- Soft olive brown#57503F
Soft Autumn is the muted, gently warm season that sits between Soft Summer and True Autumn. The coloring is blended and medium in depth, with warmth that whispers rather than shouts. Its palette is everything sun-faded: camel, sage, salmon, soft terracotta and warm mushroom.
Clarity is the dominant axis here: how muted or how vivid a color is matters more than whether it is warm or cool. (Clarity is what the 12-tone system calls this season's primary characteristic.)
Soft Autumn on the four traits
Undertone, depth and chroma are the three positions our analysis scores you against. The fourth trait, contrast, is part of the chroma reading.
- Palette lightness (L*)
- 6012-season range 36 to 79Mean CIELAB lightness of the palette, 0 is black, 100 is white.
- Palette chroma (C*)
- 2412-season range 15 to 79Mean CIELAB chroma of the palette: higher is brighter.
- Contrast
- Low. The whole face blends, which is why bright colors overwhelm it.
Is this you?
- Skin
- Neutral-warm, medium depth, with a soft golden-beige or peachy cast.
- Hair
- Dark blonde to soft golden or mousy brown, with dusty warmth.
- Eyes
- Soft hazel, warm green, muted teal or soft golden brown, often marbled.
- Contrast
- Low. The whole face blends, which is why bright colors overwhelm it.
See your face in the Soft Autumn colors
Free for your best and worst palette. All 12 in the full report.
Soft Autumn celebrities
Famous faces that share Soft Autumn coloring. The point is the pattern in skin, hair and eyes, not a resemblance.
Drew Barrymore
Gigi Hadid
Isla Fisher
Jennifer Lopez
Photos via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY / CC BY-SA / public domain. The credit for each one is on the Soft Autumn celebrities page.
Metals and makeup
Best metals: Matte gold, Antique brass, Rose gold.
Lip
- Soft terracotta
- Muted rose
- Warm nude
Blush
- Soft peach
- Warm rose
- Muted apricot
How to wear the Soft Autumn palette
A styling example: three women who share Soft Autumn coloring, each in a different outfit built from this palette.
More on Soft Autumn
Often confused with
Soft Autumn or True Autumn?
Free for your best and worst palette. All 12 in the full report.
Watch: this season explained
Hand-picked videos on Soft Autumn from working color analysts, a different teacher, the same season.
SOFT AUTUMN COLOR PALETTE: Your Best Colors / 12 Seasons Color Analysis
Mikaela Carrizo · YouTube
Soft Autumn vs Soft Summer | Seasonal Color Analysis
Isabella Zamuner · YouTube
How we know this
5,422
published season labels
We collected the celebrity seasons that 62 sites published and compared them, person by person.
Do the sources agree? →410
photos in our accuracy test
We ran our own analysis on celebrity photos and published every result, misses included.
The results →45
checked papers and books
Our encyclopedia pages cite only these, and cut any claim that has no checked source.
The source list →468
face points placed on each face
The points find your cheeks, forehead and eyes, so skin is read only there.
How it works →
Written by Ruslan Shchuchkin, ML engineer and data scientist, who built the measurement, and Jane Mitchell, certified color analyst, who writes the style guides.
Frequently asked
What colors are in the Soft Autumn color palette?
20 wearable colors, listed at the top of this page with their hex codes, plus 5 neutrals to build a wardrobe around. You do not need all of them, most people live in six or seven, and the neutrals do the heavy lifting.
What is the Soft Autumn color season?
Soft Autumn is one of the twelve seasonal color types. It is moderately warm, medium in depth and strongly soft. In practice that means salmon, soft terracotta and muted rust sit comfortably on you, while the colors in the avoid list make you look tired. Clarity is the dominant axis here: how muted or how vivid a color is matters more than whether it is warm or cool. (Clarity is what the 12-tone system calls this season's primary characteristic.)
How do I know if I'm a Soft Autumn?
Three checks. Neutral-warm, medium depth, with a soft golden-beige or peachy cast. Dark blonde to soft golden or mousy brown, with dusty warmth. Soft hazel, warm green, muted teal or soft golden brown, often marbled. Contrast is the fourth: low. the whole face blends, which is why bright colors overwhelm it. If two of those four describe you, Soft Autumn is very likely your season, our free analysis scores all twelve and tells you how close the runners-up are.
What are the worst colors for a Soft Autumn?
The clearest ones to drop are black, pure white and hot pink. Too deep and too cold, it drops a hard line under a soft, blended face. Full explanations for each are on the colors-to-avoid page.
Am I a Soft Autumn or a True Autumn?
They are neighbors, which is exactly why they get confused. The deciding axis is undertone: Soft Autumn is the cooler one and True Autumn is the warmer one. We have a full side-by-side comparison if you are torn between them.
Can a Soft Autumn wear black?
Not near your face. Soft Autumn coloring is too gentle for true black, it drops a hard edge under the chin and pulls shadows forward. Use Soft olive brown (#57503F) instead for anything worn up top, and keep black for trousers, shoes and bags where it has no effect on your skin.
Is Soft Autumn warm or cool?
Warm. Soft Autumn sits clearly on the warm side of the temperature axis, which is why gold, salmon and the rest of the Autumn palette settle the skin while icy or blue-based colors leave it sallow. Its dominant axis is clarity, though, so a warm color still needs the right softness to work.
Should a Soft Autumn wear gold or silver?
Matte gold, Antique brass and Rose gold. Metal is one of the fastest at-home tests there is: hold silver and gold either side of your face in daylight and watch your skin rather than the jewelry, the wrong metal leaves a gray or sallow cast along the jaw.
How does Soft Autumn color analysis work?
Soft Autumn color analysis places your coloring on three axes, depth, temperature and clarity, and checks they match Soft Autumn, which is moderately warm, medium in depth and strongly soft. You can approximate it at home with the metal, vein and contrast tests, but those disagree often. Our free analysis settles it: it scores all twelve seasons from your answers and one photo, so you see how far Soft Autumn leads the neighbors it gets confused with.
What is the best color for a Soft Autumn to wear near the face?
Salmon (#D98A76) is the safest high-impact choice. Anything worn near the face, collars, scarves, knitwear, has the strongest effect on how your skin reads, so spend the palette there first and worry about trousers later.
Can I use the Soft Autumn hex codes for makeup or hair dye?
Use them for clothing and accessories, where a screen color maps reasonably well to fabric. For makeup and hair, use the dedicated pages, pigment on skin behaves differently from dye on cloth, and the recommended shades there account for that.