Autumn color palette: soft, true and deep autumn compared
Three palettes share the word autumn: one greyed, one fired up, one nearly black at its dark end. Copy the codes for a design or a closet, then find out which is yours.
Hold one up to your face
Soft
True
Deep
Eighteen autumn hex codes
For a website, a poster or a mood board: copy them as they are. These are the six signature colors from each of our three autumn palettes, and they sit well together on a page.
For clothes: don’t treat them as one palette. They span three seasons, and the rest of this page is about telling those apart.
Copy for any use
Two reasons to want an autumn palette
People search for this with two different jobs in mind, and the answers don’t match. A design palette is picked for mood. Rust and olive say October, and they only have to look good beside each other. A personal palette, in color analysis, is picked for what a color does next to one particular face, and you judge it on that face. So a poster can use all eighteen codes above, while a person usually settles on one third of them.
If you’re here for a design, two practical notes. For text, reach for the dark end: Espresso on Aged Ivory measures 11.3 to 1, well over the 4.5 to 1 that W3C asks for body text. The pretty mid-tones won’t carry words: Salmon on Soft Cream manages only 2.1 to 1. We don’t cover paint, decor or this year’s fall trends, because others do and we have nothing to add. The rest of this page is about people.
What makes all three of them autumn
Warmth. At least 80% of each board measures warm, and the few cool notes are nearly all teals. When Carole Jackson popularized the four seasons in 1980, autumn was a single group, advised to wear brown, burnt orange, olive green, deep teal and maroon. Later systems split each season by whichever quality is strongest after temperature, which is how one autumn became three.
Those three are further apart than the shared name suggests. Across our boards they have none hex codes in common, so that’s 120 different colors answering to one word, and it explains how two people who are both “an autumn” can dress nothing alike. They do agree on metal: yellow gold and bronze appear on all three lists.
Soft, True or Deep: how they differ
Color has three dimensions, a point Albert Munsell made in the early 1900s: hue, lightness and strength. Since hue barely separates these palettes, the other two do the work: how light or deep the colors are, and how muted or vivid.
| Soft | True | Deep | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depth | medium | medium | medium to deep |
| Strength | soft | clear | fairly clear |
| Warmth | warm | very warm | very warm |
| Vivid colors | 0% | 35% | 22.5% |
| Dark colors | 5% | 15% | 35% |
Soft Autumn contains no vivid color at all. True Autumn holds the most, and it’s also the warmest. Deep Autumn sits lowest on lightness and reaches almost to black, while Soft Autumn stops at a soft mahogany. Treat small differences kindly: the eye doesn’t read them the way a measurement does.
Read one row of the picture
The grid at the top of this page is the quickest way to feel the difference. Take rust. Soft Rust and Rust aren’t far apart in lightness, but the true version is about twice as strong. Dark Rust then drops much darker and keeps much of that strength. Three versions of one idea, and most people will look well in only one of them.
The teal row shows something else. Deep Teal is about as muted as Muted Teal, and all it does differently is go darker. “Deep” is about lightness, and it doesn’t promise saturation. That’s worth remembering when a shop calls something a deep autumn color because it’s loud.
Which autumn are you?
The rows work as a test. Compare two colors from one row under your chin, by a window, and look at your skin, not the fabric.
Soft Autumn
You’re likely here if Soft Rust evens out your skin and Rust seems to wear you. Soul of Color describes hair, eyes and skin that blend, with no harsh contrast between them. Run the scan to see if it lands here, or read the full palette. Your likeliest confusion sits outside the family: Soft Summer, nearly level on lightness and split by temperature.
True Autumn
Often sold as the autumn, and the one a designer pictures: Pumpkin, Mustard, Olive. If Rust wakes your face up and its soft cousin looks tired, come here. Run the scan or see all 40 colors. A naming warning: in most 12-season charts, True and Warm Autumn are two names for one season. In Agile Styling’s 16-season system they’re separate, with Warm Autumn as a flow between True Spring and True Autumn.
Deep Autumn
Also called Dark Autumn. Choose it if Dark Rust and Espresso look natural on you and the lighter rows seem washed out. Run the scan and compare the board. Its neighbor is Deep Winter, equally dark and far cooler. The word doesn’t mean dark skin: a person with fair skin and near-black hair can sit here, and someone with deep skin can be a Soft Autumn.
Am I an autumn at all?
Start with temperature, since it’s the one thing all three share. Soul of Color suggests looking at how a person wears gold and bronze, which tends to bring autumns to life, and our gold or silver test runs that comparison on camera. Next, hold a warm cream and a blue-white under your face. If the white makes you look grey or sallow and the cream settles you, keep going.
Hair color doesn’t settle it. Autumn has a reputation for redheads, but Soul of Color’s own ranges cover soft golden browns, chestnut, chocolate and near-black. Its celebrity lists come with the admission that most names haven’t been verified by an analyst, so treat them as guesses from photos. For a reading of your own face, the season test reads your skin, eyes and hair from your camera, corrects the light with a sheet of white paper, and shows your season, palette and colors beside your photo.
Black and white, season by season
The three don’t agree here either, which surprises people who’ve read that autumns simply can’t wear black.
| Soft | True | Deep | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black | On the avoid list | On the avoid list | Not listed |
| Optic white | On the avoid list | Not listed | On the avoid list |
| Darkest on the board | Soft Mahogany | Bitter Chocolate | Black Brown |
| Lightest on the board | Soft Cream | Warm Cream | Aged Ivory |
An avoid list is about the neckline and big areas. Nobody’s black boots are a problem. If you want to see how these three fit among the other nine, the 12-season chart lays them out and the palettes hub has every board. Seasons are a styling convention and not a science, so if a color outside your column makes you happy, wear it. For a palette cut to your own face, the Full Color Report is the paid option.
Related guides and tools
Sources
Full Color Report
The free result shows your season. The report shows you in your colors.
$19one time. No subscription.
An in-person color analysis costs about $200 to $600. See a cost guide
Full Color Report
Bright Winter
Personal palette
Metals
Silver, platinum and white gold
Makeup
Hot pink, cherry red and clear fuchsia.
What's included
- Fifteen AI pictures of you: 3 best colors beside 3 worst, your lead color, 3 hair colors, day and evening makeup, 2 outfits, and glasses with jewelry
- What we measured on your face: undertone, depth, clarity and contrast, and how close your second season was
- Your full palette of about 40 named colors, with hex codes and how to use each group
- Your colors to avoid, why, and how to wear them away from your face
- Makeup from foundation to nails: lips, blush, eyeshadow, liner and brows, with a day and an evening look
- Hair colors to choose and to skip, and what to say to your colorist
- Metals, jewelry, glasses frames and leathers in your colors
- Your contrast level, your white and your black, suit and coat colors, prints, fabrics and denim
- A capsule wardrobe as outfit formulas, every piece in your colors
- A shopping guide: the color names to search for and the label words to skip
- The "Does this suit me?" checker for anything you might buy
- Your second season, and when to borrow from it
- A PDF of the whole report, a swatch card, a phone wallpaper and a share card, saved to your account
Common questions
- What colors are in an autumn color palette?
- Earth and spice: camel, rust, olive, mustard, teal, terracotta and warm browns, plus a cream in place of white. In color analysis the versions differ. Soft Autumn greys them down, True Autumn keeps them strong, and Deep Autumn takes them close to black.
- What are the three autumn color types?
- Soft Autumn is muted first and warm second. True Autumn, often called Warm Autumn, is warm above everything else. Deep Autumn, often called Dark Autumn, is deep first and warm second.
- Can I use these hex codes for a website or a wedding?
- Yes, they are plain color values. For a website, check text pairs for contrast, since most of the mid-tones are too close to the creams to carry body text. For print or fabric, expect a color to shift: a hex code describes a screen color, and it won't match a dye lot.
- Is a fall color palette the same as an autumn color palette?
- In design, yes, fall is simply the American word. In color analysis the season is always called Autumn, and a fall trend palette from a magazine won't line up with any of the three autumn boards here.
- Do I have to be a redhead to be an autumn?
- No. Red hair is common in descriptions of True Autumn, but those same descriptions include chestnut and chocolate brown, and Deep Autumn runs to near-black. Temperature in how colors behave on your face matters more than the hair itself.
- Why do the three autumns share no colors?
- We drew each board for its own season, and a test in our code fails if two palettes overlap too much. Plenty of ideas repeat, such as a rust, a teal and an olive in every autumn, but at a different lightness and strength each time.
See which colors are yours.
See your colors on your own face, compare seasons side by side, and get your season, your undertone and a starter palette.