Seasonal Color Analysis Quiz
Answer 8 questions about your natural colouring and the colours you look good in. You get a likely season (Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter), a sub-season from the 12-season system where your answers point clearly to one, and a palette of colours to try.
Free, no sign-up. What you enter stays in your browser: it is not saved or sent to HerFound. Reviewed .
Answer all 8 questions to see your likely season.
How it works
Seasonal colour analysis is a styling convention, not science. It grew out of the art teacher Johannes Itten's work on colour and was made popular by books in the late 1970s and 1980s, such as Color Me Beautiful. Studies of the systems have found them inconsistent, and there is no test that proves a season. Treat the result as a starting point for what to try on.
The convention describes colouring on three scales: warm or cool (temperature), light or deep (depth) and bright or soft (clarity). Each answer adds a point to one or two of these. Spring is warm with light or bright colouring, Summer is cool with light or soft colouring, Autumn is warm with deep or soft colouring, and Winter is cool with deep or bright colouring.
The quiz first decides warm or cool from the warm points minus the cool points. For warm, the season is Spring if bright plus light points are higher than soft plus deep points, and Autumn if they are lower. For cool, the season is Summer if light plus soft points are higher than deep plus bright points, and Winter if they are lower. If the two sides are equal, you get the two neighbouring seasons.
The 12-season system splits each season by its strongest trait, for example Light Spring, Warm Spring and Bright Spring. A sub-season is shown only if one of the season's three traits scores at least 2 and is clearly ahead of the other two. If warm and cool are tied, the quiz uses the stronger of depth and clarity to name the two closest seasons, for example Deep Autumn or Deep Winter.
What it cannot tell you
- This is a likely season based on your own view of your colouring, not a verdict. Light, screens, makeup, tanning and hair dye all change what you see, and two people can answer differently about the same face.
- The vein and sun questions are weak signs. Veins are often hard to see on deeper skin, and how skin reacts to sun depends a lot on how light or dark it is, which is a different thing from undertone. You can answer "I cannot tell" to both.
- Every season includes people of every skin depth and every ethnicity. A season says nothing about how light or dark your skin is, and the palettes are suggestions, not rules about what you are allowed to wear.
- Holding coloured fabric to your bare face in daylight, or an in-person draping session, is more reliable than any online quiz. Trust what you see in the mirror over the result.
Apps that do this for you
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Common questions
You find your season in colour analysis by judging three things about your natural colouring: whether it is warm or cool, light or deep, and bright or soft. Warm and light or bright is Spring, cool and light or soft is Summer, warm and deep or soft is Autumn, and cool and deep or bright is Winter. A draping session in daylight, where coloured fabrics are held under your face, is the usual way to check.
The 12 seasons in colour analysis split each of the 4 seasons into 3 by the strongest trait. They are Light, Warm and Bright Spring; Light, Cool and Soft Summer; Soft, Warm and Deep Autumn; and Deep, Cool and Bright Winter. Warm and Cool are also called True Spring, True Summer, True Autumn and True Winter.
Seasonal colour analysis is a styling convention, not a proven science. Studies have found the different systems inconsistent with each other, and there is no measurement that decides a season. Many people still find it a useful way to narrow down colours to try.
Yes, dark skin can be any season in colour analysis, including Summer and Spring. Seasons are about warm or cool, light or deep and bright or soft colouring overall, not about skin depth alone. Judge the colours on your own face in daylight rather than going by skin depth.
Soft Autumn and Soft Summer both suit muted, greyed colours, but Soft Autumn leans slightly warm and Soft Summer leans slightly cool. Soft Autumn colours include sage, camel and soft teal, while Soft Summer colours include dusty rose, grey-blue and mauve. They sit next to each other in the 12-season system, so many people try both.