Winter color palette: deep, cool and bright winter compared
The family where black and pure white belong. The three winters use them differently: Deep leans dark, Cool holds the middle, and Bright adds as much color as a palette can carry.
Hold one up to your face
Deep Winter
fairly clear on average, 32.5% vivid
Cool Winter
clear on average, 37.5% vivid
Bright Winter
very vivid on average, 52.5% vivid
Winter hex codes, column by column
Eight from each winter: its black, its white and six colors. For a design, any mix works, and black, white and one jewel tone is about as dependable as a palette gets. For a wardrobe, stay within one column, since that’s the part color analysis has an opinion on.
Dark, with ice at the other end.
Deep Winter
The classic: black, white and clear color.
Cool Winter
The same anchors with the color turned up.
Bright Winter
Can winters wear black?
Yes, and it’s the family’s defining privilege. All three of our winter boards hold a true black. The closest thing on the other nine is Deep Autumn’s Black Brown, still visibly lighter. Carole Jackson’s original winter list in 1980 was black, white, true red, fuchsia and cobalt blue. The Concept Wardrobe says of True Winter that the palette contains both true black and true white, and Soul of Color goes further, calling winters the only season who truly suit black.
We’d stop short of that last one. “Any woman can wear black” was already an objection to Jackson in the 1980s, and it’s still fair. What the boards show is narrower: for a winter, black near the face tends to be one more color on the palette, and for most others it’s the darkest thing in the picture by a long way. Winters still differ on how to use it.
Black and Icy Pink
14.1:1
Winter Burgundy and Black Plum
1.5:1
True Black and Pure White
19.3:1
True Red and Navy
2.6:1
Jet Black and Stark White
19.6:1
Hot Pink and Cobalt
2.6:1
- Deep Winter wears black as a base, then builds with other darks. Pairings like Winter Burgundy with Black Plum are low in contrast and rich in depth, and a light note keeps them from closing in.
- Cool Winter gets the cleanest effect from True Black against Pure White, the classic graphic pair. It has more mid-range color to soften with, too.
- Bright Winter can look heavy in plain black. It needs a strong color nearby, so Jet Black with Hot Pink or Cobalt is more like it. That’s our judgment and a common analyst view. Nobody has measured it.
Which whites?
Clean ones. Every winter white on our boards carries almost no tint at all. That’s what you’re shopping for, and you can’t see it on a white web page, so here they are on black.
Crisp White
#FBFBFD
muted
Deep Winter
Pure White
#FFFFFF
muted
Cool Winter
Stark White
#FDFEFF
muted
Bright Winter
Ice White
#F4F6F8
muted
Deep Winter
Icy Grey
#DDE1E6
muted
Cool Winter
Frost Grey
#DDE3EA
muted
Bright Winter
Warm White
#FFFAEE
muted
not winter
Soft Cream
#F1E5CC
muted
not winter
Cream and ivory are the ones to avoid at the neck, and Warm Beige is on Cool Winter’s list for that reason. In a shop, hold a white shirt next to anything cream. A cool white looks clean, and it makes the cream look yellow. If it’s the shirt that looks yellow, it’s on the warm side. Deep Winters who find a pure white too sharp against the skin can use Ice White. Frost Grey does a similar job for Bright Winter.
Depth, coolness and clarity
Those are the three axes analysts describe winters on. They match Munsell’s three dimensions of color. We’ve measured each from our hex codes, and color measurement is known to be uneven around blues, a real caveat for this family.
| Deep | Cool | Bright | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depth | medium to deep | medium | medium |
| Dark colors | 40% | 25% | 20% |
| Measures cool | 37.5% | 50% | 40% |
| Strength | fairly clear | clear | very vivid |
| Vivid colors | 32.5% | 37.5% | 52.5% |
Deep Winter has the largest dark share of our twelve palettes. Cool Winter is the coolest of the three, with 50% of its colors reading cool. Bright Winter is the strongest. You might notice that warmth isn’t in the table: all three sit near zero, partly because our measure scores any red as warm, even a blue-based one.
Look at the bands at the top of this page and you can see the same thing at a glance. Black and white are at the left end of each. Deep Winter then moves slowly through its muted darks. Bright Winter jumps almost straight to full color.
The three winters, and who they get mistaken for
Deep Winter
Also called Dark Winter. Deep first, cool second, with black, Ruby and Emerald at its center. Its usual confusion is Deep Autumn, almost exactly as deep and split almost entirely by temperature. Run the scan or read the Deep Winter board.
Cool Winter
Often called True Winter: cool above all, with True Red, Royal Blue and Fuchsia. The neighbor is Cool Summer, which is almost as light on average. Strength is what splits them: Cool Winter is clear, Cool Summer soft. In Agile Styling’s 16-season method, Cool Winter and True Winter are two seasons, with Cool Winter as a flow toward Summer. Run the scan and see its 40 colors.
Bright Winter
Clear first, cool second: Hot Pink, Cobalt, Emerald Pop. It ties Bright Spring on strength, and temperature separates them. Soul of Color calls it a rare season, for people who can truly carry bright colors. Run the scan or browse the board.
Winter is not a skin color
Critics in the 2020s have pointed out that the original book focused mostly on white people and assigned all people of color to winter. That was bad analysis, and the system doesn’t need it. The Concept Wardrobe describes contrast surviving on dark skin in the eye whites and the teeth, and our scan reads the whites of the eyes for that same reason. Plenty of people with fair skin and dark hair are winters, and plenty with deep skin are not.
Am I a winter?
Try camel. It’s the one color on all three of our winter avoid lists, it’s easy to find, and it does something visible on the wrong face. Put a camel coat at your neck, then a charcoal or navy. If camel leaves you sallow while the dark one wakes you up, you’re leaning cool. Then compare silver and gold with the metals test: all three winters list silver, platinum and white gold.
For a stronger check, Soul of Color suggests watching how someone looks in cobalt, cool red, magenta, emerald and black. A winter holds them. If they seem to arrive before your face does, you may be looking at a summer with the same cool lean. The season test reads your own face and shows your season and colors beside your photo.
Seasons are a convention for choosing clothes, so read all this as a starting point. The 12-season chart shows where these three sit, the hub has every palette, and the Full Color Report covers a personal cut.
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 are the three winter color types?
- Deep Winter, also called Dark Winter, is deep first and cool second. Cool Winter, often called True Winter, is cool above all. Bright Winter is clear first and cool second, and it holds the strongest colors of the three.
- What colors are in a winter color palette?
- Black, a clean white, navy and charcoal as neutrals, then jewel tones such as ruby, emerald, sapphire and fuchsia, and pale icy tints. The tints count: they look almost white, and they give dark outfits a light note.
- Can a winter wear cream or beige?
- Near the face, those are usually the weak spots, because their warmth reads as yellow against a clean white or a cool skin tone. A cool light grey or an icy tint does the same job. Beige trousers or a beige bag are a much smaller matter.
- Should winters wear silver or gold?
- All three of our winter boards list silver, platinum and white gold as their best metals. Yellow gold can look brassy here, but test it, since a favorite piece near a colored stone or a black top may work fine.
- Is True Winter the same as Cool Winter?
- In most 12-season charts, yes. In a 16-season system they can be separate: Agile Styling treats Cool Winter as lighter and softer than True Winter, with a Summer influence. Compare your own fan if you were typed that way.
- Are winter colors good for a design?
- Very, since black, white and one jewel tone give strong text contrast almost automatically. Copy a column above. Be careful with the most saturated colors: some sit at the very edge of what a screen can show, and they can look harsh side by side.
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.