One of the three autumn color palettes
True Autumn color palette
Rich earth, rust, olive, gold and forest.
20 colors to wear
Not sure you are a True Autumn?
Free for your best and worst palette. All 12 in the full report.
All 20 True Autumn colors, with hex codes
The colors that work hardest for True Autumn, each with its hex code so you can match it exactly when you shop.
- Rust#C1440E
- Pumpkin#D2691E
- Burnt orange#B7410E
- Sienna#A0522D
- Brick red#8B3A2E
- Mustard#B8860B
- Goldenrod#DAA520
- Antique gold#C9A227
- Olive#808000
- Moss green#6B8E23
- Fern green#4F7942
- Forest teal#2E5E4E
- Deep teal#1F6F78
- Warm petrol blue#3D6E8F
- Chestnut#7C4D3A
- Terracotta#96604A
- Warm plum#A0637C
- Warm coral clay#C97B5C
- Amber#D9A066
- Bronze olive#7B683F
Neutrals to build on
Buy these first. Neutrals are what you wear most, and they are where most wardrobe mistakes happen.
- Warm cream#F2E7D0
- Camel#C9A87C
- Golden brown#8B6B45
- Coffee#5A4632
- Deep olive#4A5340
True Autumn is purely warm and moderately rich: every color is golden-based, drawn from spice racks and forest floors. Skin, hair and eyes all carry visible golden or reddish warmth, and the palette runs to rust, pumpkin, olive, mustard and deep teal.
Temperature is the dominant axis here: get the warm-versus-cool call right and everything else follows. (Undertone is what the 12-tone system calls this season's primary characteristic.)
True 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*)
- 5012-season range 36 to 79Mean CIELAB lightness of the palette, 0 is black, 100 is white.
- Palette chroma (C*)
- 4512-season range 15 to 79Mean CIELAB chroma of the palette: higher is brighter.
- Contrast
- Medium, with warmth as the dominant impression.
Is this you?
- Skin
- Warm and golden, from warm ivory to deep golden bronze; often freckled.
- Hair
- Golden brown, auburn, copper or red, strong natural warmth.
- Eyes
- Warm hazel, amber, olive green or golden brown.
- Contrast
- Medium, with warmth as the dominant impression.
See your face in the True Autumn colors
Free for your best and worst palette. All 12 in the full report.
True Autumn celebrities
Famous faces that share True Autumn coloring. The point is the pattern in skin, hair and eyes, not a resemblance.
Alyson Hannigan
Cindy Crawford
Debra Messing
Jessica Chastain
Photos via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY / CC BY-SA / public domain. The credit for each one is on the True Autumn celebrities page.
Metals and makeup
Best metals: Yellow gold, Bronze, Copper, Antique brass.
Lip
- Brick
- Rust
- Warm terracotta nude
Blush
- Warm apricot
- Terracotta
- Golden peach
How to wear the True Autumn palette
A styling example: three women who share True Autumn coloring, each in a different outfit built from this palette.
More on True Autumn
Often confused with
True Autumn or Soft Autumn?
Free for your best and worst palette. All 12 in the full report.
Watch: this season explained
Hand-picked videos on True Autumn from working color analysts, a different teacher, the same season.
TRUE AUTUMN COLOR PALETTE: Your Best Colors / 12 Seasons Color Analysis
Mikaela Carrizo · YouTube
Autumn Color Analysis: Discover If You're a Deep, Warm, or Soft Autumn!
Color Class · 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 True 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 True Autumn color season?
True Autumn is one of the twelve seasonal color types. It is strongly warm, medium in depth and moderately soft. In practice that means rust, pumpkin and burnt orange sit comfortably on you, while the colors in the avoid list make you look tired. Temperature is the dominant axis here: get the warm-versus-cool call right and everything else follows. (Undertone is what the 12-tone system calls this season's primary characteristic.)
How do I know if I'm a True Autumn?
Three checks. Warm and golden, from warm ivory to deep golden bronze; often freckled. Golden brown, auburn, copper or red, strong natural warmth. Warm hazel, amber, olive green or golden brown. Contrast is the fourth: medium, with warmth as the dominant impression. If two of those four describe you, True 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 True Autumn?
The clearest ones to drop are icy pink, black and cool silver. Blue-based pastel, it makes golden skin look gray and unwell. Full explanations for each are on the colors-to-avoid page.
Am I a True Autumn or a Soft Autumn?
They are neighbors, which is exactly why they get confused. The deciding axis is undertone: True Autumn is the warmer one and Soft Autumn is the cooler one. We have a full side-by-side comparison if you are torn between them.
Can a True Autumn wear black?
Not near your face. True Autumn coloring is too gentle for true black, it drops a hard edge under the chin and pulls shadows forward. Use Deep olive (#4A5340) instead for anything worn up top, and keep black for trousers, shoes and bags where it has no effect on your skin.
Is True Autumn warm or cool?
Warm. True Autumn sits clearly on the warm side of the temperature axis, which is why gold, rust and the rest of the Autumn palette settle the skin while icy or blue-based colors leave it sallow. Temperature is also its dominant axis, so warmth matters more here than depth or clarity.
Should a True Autumn wear gold or silver?
Yellow gold, Bronze, Copper and Antique brass. 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 True Autumn color analysis work?
True Autumn color analysis places your coloring on three axes, depth, temperature and clarity, and checks they match True Autumn, which is strongly warm, medium in depth and moderately 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 True Autumn leads the neighbors it gets confused with.
What is the best color for a True Autumn to wear near the face?
Rust (#C1440E) 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 True 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.