Cool Summer · Colors to avoid
Cool Summer colors to avoid, and what to wear instead
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
"Avoid" is a stronger word than this deserves, and Cool Summer is not forbidden from owning anything. What the shades below do is specific and small: worn near a Cool Summer face, in daylight, they make the skin do something you would rather it did not — go gray, go ruddy, go flat, or step back.
Cool Summer is cool, medium and moderate, and every shade that fails does so for a reason that follows directly from one of those three. Knowing the Cool Summer categories beats carrying a list of Cool Summer names, because a category is something you can apply to a garment you have never seen before.
The categories, and why each one fails
Shades that work against your balance
A few Cool Summer shades fail for reasons particular to this palette rather than for any of the four usual ones. Because the reason differs from shade to shade, the Cool Summer report spells each of them out on its own.
2 of Cool Summer's 6 listed shades fall here.
Shades that are too warm
Golden and orange-based color on Cool Summer's cool skin brings up whatever redness is already there and turns the rest faintly yellow. The usual symptom on Cool Summer is looking flushed in photographs for no reason you can point at.
4 of Cool Summer's 6 listed shades fall here.
Three of them by name
Orange, Camel and Bright Gold. Three is enough to calibrate your eye. If you can see why those three fail on Cool Summer coloring, you can recognize the fourth and the fifth yourself in a shop, which is more useful than carrying a list.
The complete Cool Summer avoid list — every shade, its exact value, and the reason it works against you — is in your report rather than on this page, which is deliberate.
What Cool Summer should wear instead
Take the same color and move it toward blue: a cool red, a cool green, a cool brown — on Cool Summer the family is usually fine and the direction is what is wrong.
These eight are the safe Cool Summer direction, and they are the same eight the free result hands you:
- Deep Raspberry
- Blueberry
- Plum
- Cool Teal
- Cool Burgundy
- Raspberry
- Cornflower
- Cool Fuchsia
Any of them near your face does the opposite of the shades above: they clear Cool Summer skin rather than reddening it, and they agree with one another, so any two of them pair without thought.
Check a specific color
If you are holding a garment and want an answer about that exact shade rather than about its category, the free color checker takes a hex code or a color picker and says where it falls against Cool Summer specifically, in your browser, storing nothing.
Are you Cool Summer?
A Cool Summer avoid list is worse than no list at all if you are not Cool Summer, because it will talk you out of colors that suit you perfectly well. Settling whether you are Cool Summer takes one photo and about thirty seconds, and it is free.
Questions
What colors should Cool Summer avoid?
As categories: work against your balance and too warm. By name, Orange, Camel and Bright Gold are three of the Cool Summer ones. The rest of the Cool Summer list, with exact values and a reason each, is in the report — which is the part worth paying for and the reason it is not printed here.
Does "avoid" mean never wear it?
No. It means keeping it away from a Cool Summer face, and nothing more than that. A shade on the Cool Summer avoid list is perfectly fine as trousers, as a bag, as a coat you take off indoors, or anywhere below the waist. What the list is about is the light bouncing off a garment up into a Cool Summer face, and that is a much smaller part of a wardrobe than it sounds.
What if I love one of the Cool Summer colors to avoid?
Then wear it below the waist, or find the version of it that belongs in the Cool Summer palette. Take the same color and move it toward blue: a cool red, a cool green, a cool brown — on Cool Summer the family is usually fine and the direction is what is wrong.
Is black on the list?
Not for Cool Summer. Black is not universally bad; the question is whether a person's own coloring goes deep enough to meet it, and medium coloring does well enough that black stays off the Cool Summer list.
More for Cool Summer
Cool Summer hair color · Cool Summer makeup · Cool Summer outfits · Cool Summer in full