Cool Winter and Soft Summer seasons may seem similar, but they possess distinct differences in their color palettes. In this guide, we’ll explore the nuances that separate these two cool-toned seasons, exploring the varying degrees of contrast and intensity that define each one. Without further ado, let’s dive into the comparison between cool winter vs soft summer.
Soft Summer VS Cool Winter: Key Distinctions
While both Cool Winters and Soft Summers share a cool undertone, the level of contrast between their hair, skin, and eyes creates a noticeable distinction.
What Do Cool Winters Look Like?
Cool Winters tend to have a higher contrast, with darker hair, stronger eye color, and a cooler undertone in their skin.
Key characteristics of cool winters include:
- Ideal Colors: Deeply cool, moderately saturated hues like navy blue, emerald green, bright white, shades of gray, silver, ice blue, and cold pink.
- Skin Color: Pale or light skin with bluish or pink undertones
- Eye Color: Intense, crisp eyes in cool tones, such as blues, grays, or cool greens
- Hair: black, ash blonde, black, or cool brown
What Do Soft Summers Look Like?
Soft Summers exhibit a softer, more blended look with lighter hair, eyes, and a more evenly distributed skin tone.
Key characteristics of soft summers include:
- Ideal Colors: Medium-value colors with cool undertones, including grays, blue-based shades, pinks, and purples
- Skin Color: Ranges from fair to medium, and may have freckles
- Eye Color: Blue, green, or hazel/light brown with greyish undertones
- Hair: Ashy tones, such as cool ash blonde, medium ash blonde, medium ash brown, or medium brown
Bright Lipsticks Don’t Look So Great On Soft Summers
When it comes to lip colors, both seasons gravitate towards cool-toned hues. However, when it comes to high-contrast shades, Soft Summers need to be careful, as intense pinks and bold reds can overshadow their features.
Cool Winters, on the other hand, shine in slightly bolder, bright shades, while Soft Summers look their best in medium to light tones that harmonize with their softer coloring.
Unlike Cool Winters, Soft Summers Can Look Good in Gold
Soft Summers have a unique color characteristic — their overall neutral-cool hue allows them to pull off both gold and silver jewelry equally well.
This is due to the season’s proximity to the Autumn palette. Since Soft Summers lean towards cool, as well as neutral hues, they can look great in different jewelry styles — complementing both silver and gold metals.
This can’t be said about Cool Winters, however, as they lack the subtle warmth that Soft Summers possess. The former shine in platinum, as well as silver jewelry, as they tend to be dominant in cool hues exclusively.
Sometimes, a Cool Winter may have warmer undertones, depending on one’s complexion and individual skin tone. However, in such cases, it’s recommended that they wear pale gold, light gold, or rose gold, as warmer shades may overshadow their cool coloring.
Cool Winter VS Soft Summer: The Ideal Color Palette
To build the ideal color palette for your color season, you must pay attention to three factors: hue, value, and chroma levels. Soft Summer emanates a neutral-cool hue with subtle warmth, medium value, and muted chroma, whereas Cool Winter exudes a cool hue, medium-dark value, and bright or neutral chroma.
Given that, the optimal Soft Summer palette will include gentle, muted, and low-to-medium contrast hues, with an overall gentle and mysterious appearance. Its best colors, therefore, would encompass muted pinks, blues, and purples, rather than warm bright yellows, oranges, or fuchsia pinks.
When contrasting Cool Winter against Cool Summer, we can see that the former radiates in bright, crisp, high-contrast, and most importantly, saturated colors. This includes jewel-toned hues, such as turquoise, deep purple, and magenta — the very colors that the Summer color family should avoid.
Stark black and crisp white form the foundational pillars of the Cool Winter palette, in tandem with purplish indigo twilight, deep pine green, and the luminous bluey silver. These colors, entirely devoid of warmth, accentuate the clarity and coolness that defines the Cool Winter’s radiant allure, enhancing their striking complexion.
Cool Winter VS Soft Summer: Final Thoughts
In essence, the primary distinction between cool winter and cool summer lies in their varying degrees of contrast, chroma, and value. Cool winters possess a high-contrast coloring, making them ideal for wearing intense, vibrant hues, while cool summers exude a low-contrast, muted aesthetic, best complemented by soft, harmonious shades that enhance their blended features.
