What is color analysis?

Color analysis is a way of working out which colors look good next to your face. It looks at three things you were born with: how deep or light your skin is, what color your hair and eyes are, and whether your skin leans warm or cool. From those, it sorts you into one of twelve seasons, and each season comes with a set of colors that flatter you.

That is the whole idea. The reason it gets complicated is that people who do this for a living have twelve different names for it and a lot of drapery.

Why the color next to your face matters

Anything you wear near your face bounces light onto your skin. A color that is close to your own coloring makes your skin look even, and the first thing someone sees is you. A color far from your coloring does the opposite. Shadows under your eyes come forward, your skin flattens, and you look tired at four in the afternoon when you were fine at two.

This is why the same red can look expensive on one person and cheap on another. The red did not change. The skin under it did.

The three things a season is made of

Every system, whatever it calls itself, is measuring the same three axes.

• Warm or cool. Whether your skin has a golden, peachy cast or a pink, blue one. This is the axis people mean when they say undertone, and it is the reason gold suits some people and silver suits others.
• Light or deep. How dark your coloring is overall, mostly driven by your hair. A very fair blonde and a woman with black hair can both be cool, and they do not wear the same navy.
• Soft or clear. Whether your coloring is muted and blended or bright and high-contrast. Next to a hot pink, muted coloring disappears; next to a dusty sage, clear coloring looks drained.

Four seasons come out of warm and cool crossed with light and deep: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Each of those splits three ways once you add soft against clear, which is where the twelve come from. Soft autumn, for instance, is warm coloring that is muted rather than vivid.

How your season gets decided

On this site it is five questions: how deep your skin is, your natural hair color, your eye color, whether your undertone reads warm or cool, and whether your coloring is muted or bright. Contrast is worked out from your answers rather than asked, because most people guess it wrong about themselves.

The rules are fixed and written down, so the same five answers give the same season every time. Answer today and again in a year and you will get the same result, which is not true of a stylist working by eye in different light. Honestly, a good analyst in good daylight will still be more accurate on the borderline cases. What you get here instead is the same answer every time, for nothing.

Your season also does not really change. Hair color and a tan move things a little at the edges, but most of the result comes from the undertone you were born with, and that stays put.

What it is actually good for

The useful part is not the label. It is that you stop buying the same wrong thing over and over. Most closets have a small pile of items worn once, bought because the color looked good on a hanger and then looked wrong in the mirror. Knowing your season leaves you with a short list of colors you can buy without second-guessing, which makes shopping faster and cheaper.

It also makes getting dressed easier, because colors from one palette tend to go with each other. If most of your wardrobe sits in your own range, almost anything you pull out will match.

What about the clothes you already own?

You are not going to throw out half your closet, and you should not. A color outside your palette is a placement problem, not a ban.

The rule is simple: keep off-palette colors away from your face. That black dress your grandmother bought you can be a skirt problem instead of a face problem if you put a warm ivory or camel top above it. A bright cobalt blouse is fine under a jacket in one of your own colors. A scarf is the cheapest fix of all: a small piece of the right color at your collar, and the wrong color is no longer the one against your skin.

The pieces worth replacing first are the ones that sit right at your neckline and get worn constantly: your white tee, your everyday sweater, the shirt you wear under everything. Those touch your face every time. Trousers never do, so buy them in whatever color you want.

Where to start

Answer the five questions and see what comes back. It takes about a minute, there is no account and no email, and you get the full set of colors rather than a teaser.

Get your color analysis, or read the soft autumn palette guide if you already know that is your season.