Soft Summer · Hair color
Soft Summer hair color: what works and why
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
Soft Summer coloring is cool, medium and soft in contrast, and those three between them decide almost everything about hair. The cool undertone picks the direction, the medium depth picks the level, and the soft contrast decides how far Soft Summer hair may sit from Soft Summer skin before the face stops reading as one thing.
Most hair advice skips the middle one. It will tell Soft Summer to stay cool and stop there, which is true and not very useful, because the Soft Summer shade that goes wrong is usually the right direction at the wrong level. Here is all three.
The Soft Summer level
Level 5 to level 7 — mid brown through to dark blonde, which is the Soft Summer band. Medium depth is the most flexible of the three, and Soft Summer sits in the band where hair and skin stay in conversation with each other instead of competing.
Both extremes cost Soft Summer something: very dark hardens the face, very light drains it, and a change of two levels lands where a change of five does not.
The Soft Summer direction: cool
Soft Summer leans toward ash, cool beige, mushroom brown, cool chocolate and true black-brown, and away from golden, honey, copper and strawberry.
Cool skin under golden hair goes ruddy, and on Soft Summer that shows up fastest around the nose and cheeks. The gold behaves like a warm light source held under the chin, and what it warms on Soft Summer is whatever redness is already there.
The part most people miss: contrast
Soft Summer runs soft on contrast, and this is the detail salons miss most often. On Soft Summer, hair, skin and eyes sit close together in lightness; chunky highlights or a sudden darkening punch a hole in that, and the result is hair that arrives in a room before the person does.
For reference, Soft Summer coloring usually comes with hair somewhere in the middle, usually medium brown, eyes with a slightly blended, dusty quality rather than a sharp one, and skin that leans pink, olive or blue-toned.
What to ask for at the salon
- Soft Summer has to ask for a cool or neutral-cool tone in plain words, because most colorists default to adding warmth and silence on the point gets read as consent to it.
- Give the level as a number: level 5 to level 7 is the Soft Summer band, and a number is unambiguous where "medium brown" means whatever that particular colorist happens to picture.
- Have the swatch held against your jawline at a window before anything is mixed, because salon lighting runs warmer than it looks and will flatter a cool Soft Summer tone in the chair that stops flattering you at home.
- Ask where the fade lands. Cool tones fade warm, so a Soft Summer brown drifts toward red over about six weeks and wants a gloss before it gets there.
- Say at the start if you are covering gray, because it changes the formula and a Soft Summer tone chosen without that in mind arrives a level lighter than the one you agreed to.
The Soft Summer colors your hair sits next to
Whatever shade you end up with will be seen against these Soft Summer colors every day, which is a better test than any swatch book. Eight Soft Summer colors, the same eight the free result hands you:
- Muted Burgundy
- Deep Sage
- Soft Navy
- Dusty Plum
- Deep Muted Teal
- Dusty Rose
- Muted Teal
- Soft Plum
All twenty-five Soft Summer colors grouped by how to wear them, plus the shades to avoid and the reason for each, are in your report.
Not sure you are Soft Summer?
Hair is the costliest thing on this page to get wrong, and everything above is only yours if Soft Summer is. The scan settles whether you are Soft Summer from one photo in about thirty seconds, free, with nothing uploaded and no account.
Questions
What hair color suits Soft Summer?
For Soft Summer, level 5 to level 7 — mid brown through to dark blonde, which is the Soft Summer band, taken in a cool direction — so ash, cool beige, mushroom brown, cool chocolate and true black-brown. For Soft Summer the level matters more than the exact shade: a tone two levels away from where medium coloring sits will look wrong even when the undertone is right.
Can Soft Summer go blonde?
Yes, in the dark-blonde to caramel part of level 5 to level 7 — and the further above that you take it, the more Soft Summer features need help from makeup to keep up.
Does hair color change my season?
It moves two of the four — depth and contrast — because both are measured across the whole face with the hair in it, while undertone and chroma stay exactly where they are, so a big change can shift you off Soft Summer and onto a neighbor. The honest position is that a Soft Summer result describes you as you look now, which is also how everyone else is seeing you.
What should I ask a colorist for?
Soft Summer has to ask for a cool or neutral-cool tone in plain words, because most colorists default to adding warmth and silence on the point gets read as consent to it. Take a reference photo at a window rather than relying on the salon's own lighting, and ask for the Soft Summer level — level 5 to level 7 — out loud, because that is the half of the brief colorists most often fill in for themselves.
More for Soft Summer
Soft Summer makeup · Soft Summer outfits · Soft Summer colors to avoid · Soft Summer in full