Soft Autumn makeup: lip, blush, eye and nail colors

Turn the volume down before you change the color

Most advice for this season starts with hue: go warm, stay away from blue-pink. That’s half of it. The other half is strength. The loudest color on our whole Soft Autumn board is Brick Rose, and most of the board is far quieter than that. A warm coral has the right temperature and still overshoots by a long way. So when a lipstick looks wrong on you and you can’t say why, check the volume first.

Soul of Color describes the same pattern from the other side: these faces shine in muted, warm colors, and anything too bright washes them out. There’s no study behind that, and seasons remain a styling convention. Think of the map above as a starting point you can test in a mirror.

Soft Autumn lipstick

Our data gives three directions, warm rose, soft terracotta and peach nude, and the palette gives each of them a color. In order, from the lightest:

A note on nudes. A lip can go too quiet as well as too loud. In a lab study with color-calibrated photos, people asked to make female faces more attractive raised the redness contrast between lip and skin (Stephen and McKeegan, 2010). The sample was Caucasian faces only, and it says nothing about seasons. Still, it’s a fair reminder that a lip matching your skin exactly takes away something the face uses.

What to press first in the lipstick finder

Our lipstick finder finds your lips with a face landmark model and recolors them in your own light. It has nine fixed chips, none of them made for this season. Here they are, ranked by how close each comes to the board.

Start with Nude rose and Terracotta. Then try Plum, the furthest of the nine, on purpose: seeing what it does to your face is the fastest way to learn what “too much” means for you. If you can name a real lipstick you own that sits near Antique Rose, that beats any chip.

Cheeks

The directions are dusty peach and soft apricot, and they work on fair skin. Further down the scale they turn into a pale patch, which most lists don’t mention. Soft Autumn occurs on medium and deep skin too, and the blush that flatters at Monk 3 looks like a smudge of powder at Monk 8.

So choose by what shows without looking applied. On fair skin, Pale Apricot or Dusty Peach. In the middle, Dusty Coral. On deep skin, go to Terracotta or Faded Rosewood and keep them blended. A matte formula suits this season better than a shimmer, since it keeps the same quiet surface as the colors. That last part is our judgment.

Eyes

Warm taupe, olive and soft bronze are the directions, with a brown liner smudged instead of drawn. A set of four does nearly everything:

For liner, Soft Brown on most faces and Cocoa Brown if your lashes are dark. When you want something less expected, a line of Muted Teal is on the palette and looks considered. A sharp black wing isn’t forbidden. It will just be the darkest thing on your face by far, since our board stops at Soft Mahogany.

Brows

e.l.f.’s brow guide makes two useful points: your brow won’t match your hair exactly and doesn’t need to, and a brow shade works best when it shares your skin’s undertone, or stays neutral if you aren’t sure. For this season that puts you in warm, slightly dusty browns. Warm Taupe suits dark blonde hair, Soft Brown suits light to medium brown, and Cocoa Brown suits darker hair. Skip pencils sold as ash or grey-taupe, which can read cool next to golden skin.

Base and highlighter

Your season doesn’t choose your foundation. A foundation has to match your skin, and two Soft Autumns on different skin depths need different bottles, so none of the colors on this page are foundation shades. L’Oréal Paris describes the working method: find your undertone, test in the right light, and look for C, N or W on the bottle. Soul of Color describes Soft Autumn skin as medium-warm with some earthiness, so you’ll probably land in N or W, and olive-leaning skin may need a closer look. Our foundation shade finder and undertone guide are the places to start. Labels are not universal, so check how the brand defines them.

Gold or silver highlighter? Gold, kept soft. Our data calls for matte or brushed gold, rose gold and bronze in jewelry, and says bright silver looks harsh here, and the same logic carries over to the cheekbone. Soft Gold is the reference. Icy or white highlighters tend to look chalky on this coloring.

Soft Autumn nail colors

Nails get more freedom than anything else on this page, because they’re far from your face. For a neutral, use Oat Milk or Putty, which also make a softer French tip than a stark white. For color, the palette’s greens are underused: Sage and Muted Teal look deliberate, and Soft Mustard is a good one for autumn itself. Antique Rose and Terracotta match the lips above if you like things coordinated. For a dark, Cocoa Brown replaces black.

Two finished looks

Same person, two occasions. Each one gives you the exact colors, so you can compare your own products against them.

What looks too bright, too cold or too pale

• Too bright: Fuchsia, on our avoid list because it’s far more vivid than the board. In the lipstick finder, Rose pink and True red show the same effect.
• Too cold: Icy Pink, which leaves warm skin looking yellow beside it. Frosted lilac shadows do the same thing. A liner in Royal Blue is both too cold and too strong.
• Too pale: white highlighter and Optic White inner-corner liner. Both make the nearby skin look muddy.

Love a bright lip anyway? Wear it. It’s a convention, and you’ll be fine. The rest of this season lives on the Soft Autumn palette page, with hair and outfits next door. The Full Color Report lists makeup shades for your own palette.

Copy every shade

Twenty colors from this page, for comparing against a product photo or a shade card. They’re our palette’s colors. No brand makes these exact hexes, and a retailer’s swatch photo won’t be exact either.

Retailers have spotted the demand: e.l.f., for one, sells a collection it files under Soft Autumn. Those picks are theirs, and we haven’t measured them against this board, so judge each one on your own skin.

Related guides and tools

• PaletteSoft AutumnMuted and warm: dusty, gentle colors with hex codes and a free scan to check them on you.
• GuideSoft Autumn hair colorMuted warm hair shades, what to ask a colorist for and a live try-on.
• GuideSoft Autumn outfitsWhich neutrals to buy first, how to combine muted shades and what replaces black.
• GuideSoft Autumn celebritiesWho is commonly typed Soft Autumn, with a source for each and the disputes shown.