Summer color palette
Cool, soft and gentle, color seen through morning haze.
Summer is the cool, muted half of the wheel. Summer palettes are blue-based with gray folded in: dusty rose, powder blue, soft teal, sage. If your coloring is cool and gentle rather than stark, and strong colors tend to wear you, you are somewhere in Summer.
All three Summers share coolness and softness. The difference from Winter, the other cool family, is saturation: Winter takes color at full strength, Summer needs it diluted. A True Winter in Summer colors looks washed out; a Summer in Winter colors looks overwhelmed.
The three summer seasons
"Summer" on its own is too broad to shop from. These three are where it actually splits.
The combined summer palette
Colors that work across the whole family, safe ground while you narrow down which sub-season you are.
- Powder pink#F2C4D0
- Cool raspberry#C2185B
- Dusty rose#C08497
- Dusty rose#E5A9BC
- Rose red#D81B60
- Soft berry#A5677A
- Rose pink#D98BA5
- Soft rose#E091AE
- Muted plum#8F5F6E
- Soft raspberry#C2739A
- Dusty pink#C97B9B
- Soft mauve#B08BA5
- Soft lilac#B8A4CC
- Cool berry#A85C7A
- Dusty lilac#8E7C9E
- Periwinkle#A6A9D6
- Soft plum#7E5A82
- Dusty periwinkle#7A809E
- Powder blue#93B4DB
- Cool lavender#9575CD
Summer palettes in detail
Frequently asked
What is the summer color palette?
Summer is the cool, muted half of the wheel. Summer palettes are blue-based with gray folded in: dusty rose, powder blue, soft teal, sage. If your coloring is cool and gentle rather than stark, and strong colors tend to wear you, you are somewhere in Summer. The palette on this page combines the strongest colors from all three summer sub-seasons, Light Summer, True Summer, Soft Summer, so it is a good starting point before you narrow down.
What are the three summer seasons?
Light Summer is cool, strongly light and moderately soft. True Summer is strongly cool, moderately light and moderately soft. Soft Summer is moderately cool, medium in depth and strongly soft. Each has its own palette page with full hex codes.
How do I know which summer I am?
All three Summers share coolness and softness. The difference from Winter, the other cool family, is saturation: Winter takes color at full strength, Summer needs it diluted. A True Winter in Summer colors looks washed out; a Summer in Winter colors looks overwhelmed. Once you know you are in the summer family, the remaining question is which characteristic dominates, depth, temperature or clarity. Our free analysis scores all twelve seasons and tells you which summer you land on, and by how much.
Is summer a warm or cool season?
Cool. Every color in a summer palette is blue-based. If silver jewelry flatters you more than gold, and pure white suits you better than cream, you are in a cool family.
How does summer color analysis work?
Summer color analysis places your coloring on three axes, depth, temperature and clarity, then reads which of the three summer seasons your skin, hair and eyes lean to. The family is the easy half; the useful answer is the season underneath it. Our free tool scores you against all twelve seasons from your answers and one photo, so you get the summer result and how close the runners-up are, not just a label.
Is summer a color season?
"Summer" is a color family, not one of the twelve color seasons on its own, it splits into Light Summer, True Summer, Soft Summer. People searching "summer color season" usually mean the whole summer group, which is what this page covers. The specific season underneath is one of those three, and each has its own palette page.