SOFT SUMMER

COOL + SOFT

Also referred to as Muted Summer is the COOL + MUTED season. Their colors are misty and gentle. Think hazy and delicate colors from a mountain sunrise landscape.

Color Dimensions

You are a Soft Summer or a Muted Summer if your features look slightly greyed out or just blend because all of them share a similar color. Because of this, they won't have a lot of contrast against your skin, and if they do make contrast, they will still look muted.

If you remember when we were talking about color dimensions, you will remember that tone and saturation were determined on a grayscale, so to avoid getting upstaged, the colors of a Soft Summer will be desaturated.

CONTRAST AND SATURATION

There are two types of contrast that will indicate if you are a Soft Type.

The first one is if your 3 features (skin, hair, and eyes) all have a similar coloring. Since all of them are very similar, none of them stand out by themselves.

The second one is if your features are very muted. POC tend to have darker features, therefore, you might have a higher contrast level, but if your features are still muted, you will look better in softer colors.

VALUE

The default is a medium value level, depending on the coloring on the person it can be slightly lighter or darker, but since it is a tertiary feature, it won’t be a lot.

HUE AND TEMPERATURE

As a cool season, you will look your best in cool colors. If you are neutral warm, then your colors will be cool, but not extremely cool and you can also wear some cooler colors.

If you feel like this might be your type you must be able to wear soft pastel colors. See if you look good in colors such as blush, steel blue, and soft lavender. Since you are MUTED + COOL, the opposite would be CLEAR + WARM, try to see if your worst colors are bright yellow, true orange, and lime green.

Is this the right season for me?

SOFT SUMMER VS. SOFT AUTUMN

Your sister palette is the Soft Autumn palette, you can borrow the cooler colors from it. Let's also remember that since your two main color characteristics are COOL and MUTED, when you want to wear colors that are not from your palette, they should match one of those. For example, if you want to wear a warm color, it should be muted, and if you want to wear a bright color, it should be cool, still, these won't be the best hues for you; also, try to avoid wearing them near from your face.

SOFT SUMMER AND DARK WINTER

We already established that Soft Autumn is your sister palette, now let's talk a bit about your cousin palette, Dark Winter. They are both the softest/more toned down and darker types of their respective seasons, but the colors of a Dark Winter will have more depth and be a bit brighter, and the colors of a Soft Summer will be more muted and be a bit lighter. For example, periwinkle vs grape, sapphire vs cornflower, or seafoam vs dark marine blue.

Since Summers are the seasons with the lowest color tolerance, be very careful when using the colors from the Dark Winter palette, if you do experiment with them, go for the softer hues in it.

More resources for Soft Summers

Dowloadables

DYI color season guide

Cocoa Styling

Hire me as your stylist

Colors for Muted Summers

What you want to do is replicate your cool undertone and the softness of your features in your colors. This is why your colors will blend with you and create just the right level of contrast without competing with you.

If you can wear muted colors without being washed out by them, you are definitely a Soft Summer. However, Soft Summers with darker skin will still need a bit more contrast especially if they have darker features, to do that they can incorporate a few pops of darker colors, but not a lot.

Neutral colors are great for you because they tend to be more toned down than other colors. Go for greige, oatmeal, and charcoal.

Your accent colors are a mix of rose pinks, soft blues, and hazy teals. You can also wear yellow, as long as it is a muted and slightly cooler version of it.

180+ Color Guide with codes and names

COCOA STYLING'S
SOFT SUMMER
EXAMPLES

*Keep in mind lighting affects how skin might look, so we might move some celebrities to the cooler or warmer counterpart. It’s very useful when they post their makeup routines because they mention their foundation shade letting us know if they are warm, cool, or neutral.*