Black on warm, rich skin tones (True Autumn)
Close without landing: with warm, rich colouring, black misses the True Autumn palette by ΔE 13.9.
The answer
Close, but not a match. Black sits just outside the True Autumn palette. The nearest thing in the palette is #3E3226, ΔE 13.9 away, which is one of the four neutrals the season is built on. Under 12 reads as the same colour family; past 25 the two are visibly different colours.
There is a second problem. Black lands within ΔE 3.0 of #000000, which is on the short list of colours that actively work against True Autumn colouring. That is the failure people can see and cannot name.
How black scores across all twelve seasons
Black is an opinionated colour: Deep Winter scores it 93 and Light Summer scores it 0. A gap that wide means the colour genuinely decides something, and getting it right is worth the effort.
True Autumn sits 6 of twelve at 47, 45 points behind Deep Winter. That gap is the honest size of the compromise, not a verdict on the colour.
- Deep Winter: 93 (ΔE 3.0).
- True Winter: 93 (ΔE 3.0).
- Bright Winter: 93 (ΔE 3.0).
- True Autumn: 47 (ΔE 13.9) <- this season.
- Light Summer: 0 (ΔE 44.4).
What to wear instead
Nearest first. These are the colours in the True Autumn palette that get closest to what you wanted from black, so the substitution costs the least.
- #3E3226: very deep, a chocolate brown (ΔE 8.6).
- #6B4A2C: deep, a chocolate brown (ΔE 10.8).
- #6B5842: deep, nearest common name olive green (ΔE 14.1).
Updated 19 August 2026