Seasonal sub-types – Winter

The Winter palette is cool, clear, vivid and high contrast. The only palette with true white and black in it, it also features the strongest variants of red, green, pink and blue. If you’ve been given a designation within the Winter palette, let’s explore what that means for you.

Do remember though, that your seasonal type is a guide. If you fall at one end of a palette, it doesn’t mean you can’t ever go near colours from other areas of that palette, just that this particular area is the strongest part for your own skin tone and contrast level. Remember that the rest of the colours within your wider seasonal palette will also work for you and will harmonise with your absolute best colours.

True/Jewel Winter

This is the palette most of us visualise when we think of the Winter colours. Boldest scarlet, bright white and true black. These colours all play at the extremes of light, dark and bright.

True Winters are high contrast, bold and bright, and often have high contrast in their colouring, perhaps in the form of very dark hair with fair skin and blue/green eyes.

Your best colours as a True Winter are holly berry red, emerald green, cobalt blue and stark black and white, all worn in high contrast.

This means that the dominant tonal direction for this seasonal sub-type is Clear (although Cool can also be helpful to look at), so you can also search the Clear (and Soft) dominant tonal direction for more colours which you might love (if you want to read more about how tonal directions relate to seasons, this post is a great starting point).

Bright/Clear/Sprinter Winter

A Bright Winter is in some ways even brighter than a True Winter, with an even lighter, clearer look to the colours. This is because they have a little of Spring’s lightness added to them (although they still sit on the cool side of that warm/cool dividing line).

Bright Winters can often look like Springs, with clear blue eyes and blonde hair, or even like Summers, with their brightness only appearing when they wear their bold Bright Winter colours.

Your best Bright Winter colours are the brightest pinks, Chinese Blue, icy greys and Acid Yellow.

This means that the dominant tonal direction for this seasonal sub-type is Clear, so you can also search the Clear dominant tonal direction for more colours which you might love (if you want to read more about how tonal directions relate to seasons, this post is a great starting point).

Cool/Sultry Winter

A Cool Winter sits at the deepest end of the Winter palette, losing some of the brightness of the True and Bright Winters and gaining some extra darkness.

Cool Winters often have slightly more depth of colouring than their brighter counterparts, and are often (unsurprisingly, given the name!) extremely cool toned, turning sallow in anything with even a hint of warmth in it.

Your best colours are charcoal grey, deepest indigo and navy and burgundy, and very pale grey is often a better pale neutral than stark white.

This means that the dominant tonal direction for this seasonal sub-type is Cool, so you can also search the Cool dominant tonal direction for more colours which you might love (if you want to read more about how tonal directions relate to seasons, this post is a great starting point).

Burnished/Deep/Dark Winter

A Deep Winter often carries hints of a warm look, perhaps a bit of red in the hair or a glimpse of amber in the eye colour – they actually sit closer to the Autumn end of the Winter palette, while still needing those cooler Winter colours rather than Autumn’s golden tones. As such the colours often have a slight hint of almost-warmth – a bit more brown in a burgundy, or a slightly richer green rather than bold emerald.

Your best colours as a Burnished Winter are some of the least obviously Winter colours of the palette, such as stone, mole grey and pine green.

This means that the dominant tonal direction for this seasonal sub-type is Deep, so you can also search the Deep dominant tonal direction for more colours which you might love (if you want to read more about how tonal directions relate to seasons, this post is a great starting point).