Each axis runs from about -1 to +1 and is scored separately. These are editorial centres for a repeatable comparison, and the hex values are screen references rather than measured standards. Scoring the four apart is what lets the tool tell you which single call was the shaky one, instead of handing you a season and no reasoning.
Light Summer is light colouring on a cool base. Skin is usually fair with a pink or neutral cast, hair runs from ash blonde to light ash brown, and eyes are typically blue, grey or soft green. Depth sits at -1, the lightest available, and everything else follows from that.
Three of its four scores are negative: cool at -0.55, low contrast at -0.55 and softened at -0.55. Nothing about this season is emphatic, which is why strong colour of any kind tends to take over rather than sit alongside the face.
How to check whether this is your season
Check lightness first. If hair, skin and eyes are all light and close together in depth, you are in a light season.
Then temperature. Hold a cool powder pink next to your face, then a warm apricot. Light Summer lifts with the cool one and can look slightly yellow against the warm one.
Then chroma. At -0.55 this season is gently softened. If clean, clear pastels suit better than dusty ones, the answer is Light Spring rather than Light Summer.
These are the actual palettes the colour tool works from, not a sample. Point at one to hold it. Twelve seasons rather than the old four, because four cannot separate someone light and cool from someone deep and cool.
The principle behind every suggestion below
Colours must be light, cool and slightly softened all at once. Any one of depth, warmth or brightness added on its own overwhelms the colouring.
Your colours
This is the most easily overwhelmed of the twelve seasons. It is not that strong colours look bad, it is that they look like the only thing in the room.
Worth reaching for
Powder blue, lilac and periwinkle
Soft seafoam and cool mint
Rose pink and soft raspberry
Soft grey and pearl as neutrals rather than black
Works against it
Black and charcoal, which are far too heavy
Orange, rust and golden yellow
Very bright or neon anything
Pure optical white, which can be slightly harsh
Use grey where others use black
A soft mid-grey does the neutral job black does, without the weight that flattens light colouring.
Light Summer is one of the seasons that genuinely suits grey, which is otherwise a difficult neutral. It sits at the right depth and the right temperature at the same time.
Where people go wrong
Reaching for black as a default
At depth -1 with low contrast, black creates a difference the face cannot match. Grey, soft navy and dusty blue give a dark neutral without the same drop.
Choosing warm pastels
Peach and buttercup belong to Light Spring. They are the right lightness and the wrong temperature, and next to cool colouring they look slightly sallow.
Adding brightness to avoid looking washed out
The instinct is understandable and it backfires. Feeling washed out in this season usually means the colour is too warm or too heavy, not that it needs to be brighter.
Common questions
Depth and how cool. Light Summer sits at depth -1 and temperature -0.55. Cool Summer sits at depth 0 and temperature -1.00. Light Summer needs pale colours, Cool Summer can carry mid-depth ones, and Cool Summer is the more strongly cool of the two.
Yes, and it is one of the better dark neutrals for the season, provided it is a soft navy rather than an inky one. It gives depth without the hard edge black brings.
Pure optical white is bright and high contrast, and both work against a light, low-contrast, softened season. A soft white or pearl gives the same effect without draining the face.
Why undertone is considered alongside depth, chroma and contrast.
Last checked 2026-07-31
Not sure this is you?
The tool scores temperature, depth, contrast and chroma separately across all twelve seasons, then shows which of the four calls was closest to a boundary. That is the honest answer to why different sites give you different seasons.
