Warm or cool: the twelve seasons

The axes, not the names

A season is not a personality. It is a position on three axes: undertone decides which half of the colour wheel is yours, value decides how dark the palette runs, and chroma decides how much grey is mixed into it. The twelve names are a convention laid over a continuous space, and no personal-colour system has published an inter-rater reliability study in forty-five years.

Which is why the numbers are printed here alongside the names. If a label ever feels one notch off, the axes are the part that was never in doubt.

• Light Spring: warm-toned, value 3, chroma 0.55, gold.
• True Spring: warm-toned, value 4.5, chroma 0.75, gold.
• Bright Spring: warm-toned, value 5, chroma 0.95, gold.
• Light Summer: cool-toned, value 3, chroma 0.45, silver.
• True Summer: cool-toned, value 5, chroma 0.4, silver.
• Soft Summer: neutral, value 5.5, chroma 0.25, silver.
• Soft Autumn: neutral, value 5.5, chroma 0.3, gold.
• True Autumn: warm-toned, value 6.5, chroma 0.6, gold.
• Deep Autumn: warm-toned, value 8, chroma 0.65, gold.
• Deep Winter: cool-toned, value 8.5, chroma 0.75, silver.
• True Winter: cool-toned, value 7, chroma 0.85, silver.
• Bright Winter: neutral, value 6.5, chroma 1, silver.