Seasonal Color Analysis

What is Seasonal Color Analysis also known as personal color analysis? It is the process of determining the colors that best suit an individual based on his/her complexion, hair and eye color.

Color analysis divides colors into four different seasonal groups; spring, summer, autumn and winter. Spring and Autumn colors have warm yellow base colors while summer and winter colors have cool blue base colors.

Above pictures from the left: Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter

I have a friend who is a color consultant. Before I go any further, please note that I am not a specialist here, so what I state here is based on what I learned from my friend.

First of all, color analysis is not as simple as Asians having the similar tone of skin color, brown eyes and black hair makes them share their best colors. Even Asians have various tones of skin color, different shades of brown eyes and subtle difference in darkness of hair color. You can’t simply judge best suited colors based on racial groups. If you fit in one of the racial groups such as Asians, Latinos, Africans and Mediterranean, when finding an analyst, you might want to check if a consultant is familiar with these racial groups since some systems leave out these above groups because of the less variations in their hair and eye color.

So far, all my friends who have gone through the color analysis were ‘diagnosed’ either as springs or autumns. I’m the only one with summer coloring so far. According to my consultant friend though, 60% of Japanese people are thought to be summers, so Japanese person being summer is not unusual.

Have you ever experienced a situation where you saw a dress on a magazine or a poster and you tried on the same one just to find out that it didn’t look as well on you as you pictured? There might be many factors for the result, but one of them is probably because the color(s) was not right for you.

I stated above that my best suited season of colors is summer. What happens when I put on other colors? When I put on spring colors, my face turned a bit reddish as though I am warm. Autumn colors made me look unrefined. Winter colors created dark shadows on my face and I looked like instantly I aged 10 years. On the other hand, when I put summer colors, my skin looks healthy and supple. This is especially true with cosmetics. The right eye shadows, blush and lip sticks bring out the best of your natural coloring.

How does she determines what season of colors best suit for her client?

She has a big stack of fabric with many different colors and each color is a group which consists of four seasonal tones. A client sits on a chair in front of a mirror and my friend places on her client below the neck line four pieces of fabric with four seasonal tones of a color and flips the pieces of fabric one by one. She analyzes what happens to the skin and hair with every color as she tells her client what she sees so that he/she can see it as well. She has something like 7 or 8 colors to go through.

After a season is determined for the client, my consultant friend puts the fabric of colors of the season that best suit him/her. A friend of mine below on the left was autumn and on the right was spring.

A friend of mine below was also analyzed as autumn. The color of the scarf she’s wearing is autumn. My friend who’s a consultant puts blush with the color that best suits the client at the end of a session.

She is wearing a spring color scarf below.

Did this all make sense to you? I hope it did. If you have any questions, please feel free to put them on the comment section. My friend who is a consultant reads this blog, so she might be able to answer your questions here. I will also be happy to answer any questions to the best of my knowledge.

I’ve hosted a seasonal color analysis get-together at my place twice so far and today was the second time. The more I learn about the seasonal color analysis, the more I’m interested in it and I’m convinced of the benefit of this color styling.

A friend of mine who is a color consultant always wears stylish clothes with colors that look great on her. Can you tell what season she is? The answer is autumn. I have always loved autumn colors and many of my summer clothes seem to be in autumn colors. Sigh. I mix those with summer color scarf or sweater to tone it down.

My friend did a quick analysis on my two girls the other day. My first one is summer/spring and my younger one is autumn.

The dress my daughter is wearing in the pictures below is autumn. If you’re autumn, that does not mean you can only wear brown and orange. There are other colors that are included in the season. Also, clothes can be with a combination of colors from different seasons. In this case, you determine the season of the clothing item based on the total image that the colors on the dress create.

Thanks for reading my post. I hope this was helpful to you in any way.

On a completely different note, have you heard of a movie “My Neighbor Totoro” directed by Hayao Miyazaki? It’s my second child’s current favorite movie. It’s also been my favorite animation movie since I was a child. It makes me feel old to think that my child is watching what I used to watch when I myself was a child…