Autumn Color Palette
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
Autumn is the warm, grounded family. Its colors come from earth and spice rather than ice and water, and they carry a weight that the spring family deliberately avoids.
An autumn is flattered by richness. Where a summer needs color knocked back and a winter needs it pure, an autumn needs it warm and a little dense. Thin, icy shades leave autumn coloring looking drained rather than fresh.
What every autumn has in common
Warmth all the way through
Autumn skin carries gold or olive, autumn hair carries copper or chestnut, and autumn eyes are amber, hazel or warm brown. Gold, brass and bronze all sit naturally.
Earth before ice
Rust, moss, bronze and chocolate are the family’s backbone. The same green works on an autumn and a winter, but the autumn version has yellow in it and the winter version has blue.
Cream, not white
Optic white is the autumn family’s weak point. Cream, ivory and ecru do the job that white is supposed to do for everyone else.
The three autumn types
Four colors from each follow. For the whole palette, the outfits and the shades that work against you, open that type’s page.
Soft Autumn
The gentlest autumn. Warm but knocked back, so sage and soft terracotta land better than full-strength rust.
- Deep Rust#A0502C
- Deep Olive#5E5E32
- Burnt Orange#B85C2E
- Warm Burgundy#7A3B3A
The full Soft Autumn color palette, outfits and what to avoid
Warm Autumn
The richest autumn and the most obviously golden. Rust, forest and deep gold are its natural territory.
- Deep Rust#8C3D22
- Forest Green#3E5E32
- Burnt Sienna#9A4A28
- Deep Mustard#A87F1E
The full Warm Autumn color palette, outfits and what to avoid
Deep Autumn
Autumn depth with the warmth kept. Dark hair and dark eyes, but nothing icy about any of it.
- Warm Deep Burgundy#6E2A28
- Pine Green#23402A
- Chestnut#6E3A20
- Deep Amber#A8681E
The full Deep Autumn color palette, outfits and what to avoid
How to tell which one you are
Hold gold against silver
Gold wins on almost every autumn, and usually by an obvious margin. If silver wins, the warmth is not there and the summer or winter families fit better.
Then judge intensity
Earthy colors that look rich rather than heavy point to Warm Autumn. Colors that need taking down a notch point to Soft Autumn. Near-black shades that look natural rather than severe point to Deep Autumn.
Check how you handle brown
Brown is the quickest autumn check there is. On most families it reads flat; on an autumn it reads deliberate, and chocolate often replaces black entirely.
Autumns are told apart by richness more than anything else: how much color you can carry before it starts carrying you.
The quiz settles warm against cool in six questions; only a photo can settle which autumn. Take the color analysis quiz.
Questions
Can an autumn wear black?
It is wearable but rarely the best choice. Espresso, chocolate and deep olive do the same structural job while keeping the warmth that makes autumn coloring work.
What makes autumn different from spring?
Both are warm. Spring is clear and light-filled; autumn is richer and more muted. A bright coral belongs to spring, a burnt rust belongs to autumn.
Is olive skin always autumn?
No. Olive skin appears across several seasons. It is common in the autumn family because olive is a warm-neutral cast, but depth and clarity still decide which season it lands in.
Sources and further reading
Four references, each one checked against what it is cited for. Where a claim on this page rests on published color science rather than on our own measurements, this is where it comes from.
- A perceptual color space for image processing — Björn Ottosson, 2020 Defines the Oklab color space and its polar lightness–chroma–hue form. This is the space every distance, verdict and color combination on this site is computed in.
- CIELAB color space — Wikipedia The CIE 1976 space Oklab was built to improve on, with lightness and two opponent axes. It also records that CIELAB is not as perceptually uniform as intended, particularly across blues — which is the reason we do not use it.
- Munsell color system — Wikipedia Albert H. Munsell described color by hue, value and chroma in 1905. The depth and chroma readings used here descend from that framing.
- Color analysis — Wikipedia Seasonal color analysis as a practice, and the four-season division it starts from. It also notes that the field has no standard training or qualification, which is the honest context for any result — including ours.
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