Soft Autumn · Colors to avoid
Soft Autumn colors to avoid, and what to wear instead
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
"Avoid" is a stronger word than this deserves, and Soft Autumn is not forbidden from owning anything. What the shades below do is specific and small: worn near a Soft Autumn face, in daylight, they make the skin do something you would rather it did not — go gray, go ruddy, go flat, or step back.
Soft Autumn is warm, medium and muted, and every shade that fails does so for a reason that follows directly from one of those three. Knowing the Soft Autumn categories beats carrying a list of Soft Autumn 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 cool
Blue-based color against Soft Autumn's warm skin leaves a gray cast under it. The shade is not unattractive — it is that it makes a Soft Autumn face look like it needs more sleep than it has had, and the effect is strongest in daylight.
2 of Soft Autumn's 6 listed shades fall here.
Shades that work against your balance
A few Soft Autumn 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 Soft Autumn report spells each of them out on its own.
2 of Soft Autumn's 6 listed shades fall here.
Shades that are too clear
A pure, high-saturation color beats Soft Autumn's muted coloring outright. On Soft Autumn you stop being the thing people look at, the shirt starts being it, and the face above reads as faded rather than as soft.
2 of Soft Autumn's 6 listed shades fall here.
Three of them by name
Icy Pink, Black and Bright Fuchsia. Three is enough to calibrate your eye. If you can see why those three fail on Soft Autumn coloring, you can recognize the fourth and the fifth yourself in a shop, which is more useful than carrying a list.
The complete Soft Autumn 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 Soft Autumn should wear instead
Take the same color and move it toward gold: a warm version of almost any shade works on Soft Autumn where the cool version does not.
These eight are the safe Soft Autumn direction, and they are the same eight the free result hands you:
- Deep Rust
- Deep Olive
- Burnt Orange
- Warm Burgundy
- Deep Mustard
- Terracotta
- Warm Muted Teal
- Soft Mustard
Any of them near your face does the opposite of the shades above: they warm Soft Autumn skin rather than greying 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 Soft Autumn specifically, in your browser, storing nothing.
Are you Soft Autumn?
A Soft Autumn avoid list is worse than no list at all if you are not Soft Autumn, because it will talk you out of colors that suit you perfectly well. Settling whether you are Soft Autumn takes one photo and about thirty seconds, and it is free.
Questions
What colors should Soft Autumn avoid?
As categories: too cool, work against your balance and too clear. By name, Icy Pink, Black and Bright Fuchsia are three of the Soft Autumn ones. The rest of the Soft Autumn 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 Soft Autumn face, and nothing more than that. A shade on the Soft Autumn 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 Soft Autumn face, and that is a much smaller part of a wardrobe than it sounds.
What if I love one of the Soft Autumn colors to avoid?
Then wear it below the waist, or find the version of it that belongs in the Soft Autumn palette. Take the same color and move it toward gold: a warm version of almost any shade works on Soft Autumn where the cool version does not.
Is black on the list?
For Soft Autumn, 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 Soft Autumn does not go deep enough to meet it, so it stops behaving like a neutral and starts being the loudest thing in the wardrobe.
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