Light Summer · Colors to avoid
Light 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 Light Summer is not forbidden from owning anything. What the shades below do is specific and small: worn near a Light 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.
Light Summer is cool, light and moderate, and every shade that fails does so for a reason that follows directly from one of those three. Knowing the Light Summer categories beats carrying a list of Light 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 are too warm
Golden and orange-based color on Light Summer's cool skin brings up whatever redness is already there and turns the rest faintly yellow. The usual symptom on Light Summer is looking flushed in photographs for no reason you can point at.
5 of Light Summer's 6 listed shades fall here.
Shades that are too clear
A pure, high-saturation color beats Light Summer's muted coloring outright. On Light Summer you stop being the thing people look at, the shirt starts being it, and the face above reads as faded rather than as soft.
1 of Light Summer's 6 listed shades fall here.
Three of them by name
Orange, Black and Mustard. Three is enough to calibrate your eye. If you can see why those three fail on Light Summer coloring, you can recognize the fourth and the fifth yourself in a shop, which is more useful than carrying a list.
The complete Light 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 Light Summer should wear instead
Take the same color and move it toward blue: a cool red, a cool green, a cool brown — on Light Summer the family is usually fine and the direction is what is wrong.
These eight are the safe Light Summer direction, and they are the same eight the free result hands you:
- Rose
- Cool Berry
- Slate Blue
- Orchid
- Soft Teal
- Cornflower Blue
- Soft Fuchsia
- Light Raspberry
Any of them near your face does the opposite of the shades above: they clear Light 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 Light Summer specifically, in your browser, storing nothing.
Are you Light Summer?
A Light Summer avoid list is worse than no list at all if you are not Light Summer, because it will talk you out of colors that suit you perfectly well. Settling whether you are Light Summer takes one photo and about thirty seconds, and it is free.
Questions
What colors should Light Summer avoid?
As categories: too warm and too clear. By name, Orange, Black and Mustard are three of the Light Summer ones. The rest of the Light 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 Light Summer face, and nothing more than that. A shade on the Light 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 Light Summer face, and that is a much smaller part of a wardrobe than it sounds.
What if I love one of the Light Summer colors to avoid?
Then wear it below the waist, or find the version of it that belongs in the Light Summer palette. Take the same color and move it toward blue: a cool red, a cool green, a cool brown — on Light Summer the family is usually fine and the direction is what is wrong.
Is black on the list?
For Light Summer, yes, and it surprises people more than anything else here. The reason is depth rather than taste: black is the deepest shade there is, and Light Summer does not go deep enough to meet it, so it stops behaving like a neutral and starts being the loudest thing in the wardrobe.
More for Light Summer
Light Summer hair color · Light Summer makeup · Light Summer outfits · Light Summer in full