How The 5 Autumns Add Brown To Hair Colour
February 3, 2010 by Christine Scaman
Pardon, but what 5 Autumns?
Well, in Seasonal Colour Analysis, there’s Soft, True, and Dark.
But Autumn’s blends include Soft Summer and Dark Winter too.
Only 1 True Season, and 4 Neutral Seasons all comprise some Autumn colour influence.
Autumn’s biggest misconception is the copper red hair. Usually, these people have brown hair.
The Autumn=copper association is often extended to include clothing colours, skin undertones, and makeup colours.
In fact, the shade of brown used to warm Autumn colours doesn’t attain copper’s heat till you’re way into the middle of the Autumn action.
Let’s start at True Summer. No orange. No gold. No yellow. The brown is grey and the grey is blueish.
As Autumn starts phasing in, we move to Soft Summer. A little brown is being added. A neutral brown, not orange yet, not even amber. The blue undertone is taken out. The colours appear to have a faint tan.
Soft Autumn comes along next. We see a soft amber brown. Yellows re-emerge, where True Summer barely had any, and they are golden as an amber-brown patina lays over all the colours of this palette. This is the beginning of the metallic quality we talk about in the skin and hair of Autumn people. It’s hard to describe. It doesn’t look like a tan, it’s much more in the skin than on it.
Finally, True Autumn. NOW the undercurrent is truly orange. Not before. Brown, remember, is just dark orange. This is an orangey brown. It is in the skin. It is also in the eye colour.
Up to Dark Autumn, a trace of Winter is felt. Winter’s colours are cooler and bring in red, the essential colour of the Winter group. The result is the red-orange undertone that defines the perfect disappearing blush and lipstick on Dark Autumn. Colour Analysis is all about cosmetic colours custom-coloured for your skin.
Since Winter is dark, we must add another Winter effect for Dark Winter : the addition of perceptible black. What orange remains is turning neutral brown again, like it was in Soft Summer, but a darker version caused by the black.
Now, we leave Autumn altogether and it’s True Winter. Orange is gone again.
Watch me do it.
Be careful.
Soft Summer’s hair is almost always too light and too highlighted with a colour that’s too yellow. At first glance, they seem like light people and it looks ok. The Colour Analysis drapes soon show us how aging the light hair is for the skin tone. Once it’s corrected, it is much better.
A Soft Autumn can too easily be put in too red hair. It is overkill every time. Unless Nature gave you red, it is VERY hard to get right from a bottle. Like thinking a bottle can replicate your childhood colour. Won’t happen. This is light tawny hair.
True Autumn in light tawny hair looks F-L-A-T. And instantly 10 years older. They need warmth and rich colour. They do not need highlights, lowlights, or other bizarre f/x. The colour should speak for itself.
Dark Autumn often adds a red rinse. You NEED to know if you’re on the warm or cool side of the Season. If the red is too cool, like red wine, it can be very artificial. Artificial works on the staff of the hair salon, not the clients.
Dark Winter should do what all Winters do. Think twice before lightening hair. They can have a dark force that is to be reckoned with. Breaking it up with frosted tips, well… I’d rather have the force. The skin-perfecting hair colour is a dark neutral brown, most of the time.
What’s the hair lesson? Nature will never give you hair colour that is your skin’s perfection. They accord automatically. Your natural colour is always your best base colour.
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My haircolor as child was a light, coppery brown but got darker and less vibrant as I got older. I color it auburn or warm brown now (my hair pulls a lot of red, so a color labeled “golden” shows up auburn on me). I’ve noticed that it looks much more natural with an orange rather than a blue base. Most drugstore reds, especially the darker ones, have a burgundy/mahogany tint that would probably look awful on anyone except maybe a dark winter. I still think my hair is a little too dark, but I’m hesitant to go any lighter than medium red/brown as my eyebrows are fairly dark.
If a Soft Summer has (and always has) had plentiful natural yellow and gold highlights (and some orange-y red highlights, too) among some medium ashy brown hair, I’m confused as to how you can say that nature always give you colors that accord naturally. By your hair color description, my natural coloring does not work, and is aging me unnecessarily.
I’ve always thought my cool/warm combo worked because I have light freckles of similar coloring to my natural highlights and some similarly colored yellow/gold/tan blobs in my otherwise blue-gray eyes.
But that’s an overall blending, not a seasonal color analysis thing, I think.
So how does that work?
Kathy,
Do you know your Season? I’m not a fan of too much hair tampering, you’re given your perfect base colour automatically by Nature. However, those Seasons that are Light or Soft, often with naturally mousy hair, can certainly do some playing with light to make things a little more interesting.
Michelle,
Great e-mail name, hopefully not a sign of how you’re feeling
The colours in you, every one of them, all sit in the same place on the 3 scales that define any colour – the light/darkness, the warm/coolness, the clear/softness. They can’t NOT work together. They are unified by the fact that the same genetics colour your whole body.
You can find ANY hair colour among ANY Season. One reason it’s so hard to do this from books is that very few people IRL follow those rules of averages shown in the book’s illustrations. There are Light Summers with red-brown hair.
You’re right that freckles and eye colour are not helpful to knowing Season. They’re far more misleading than anything else.
I want to answer your question but I’m not certain exactly what it is. Can you ask it in a different way?
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I was analyzed a couple of years ago as a Soft Summer that flows to Light Summer, so I’m definitely cool. Assuming that was correct, I’m a Soft Summer who has (and always has) had plentiful natural yellow, gold, and orange-y red highlights among some medium ashy brown hair and cool blond highlights. I’m confused as to how you can say that nature always gives you colors that accord naturally, since by your hair color description, my natural coloring does not work. I may be wearing my right colors, but there’s still not harmony, right?
From the analyst, I’ve always thought my cool/warm combo worked because I have light freckles of similar coloring to my natural highlights and some similarly colored yellow/gold/camel blobs in my otherwise cool eyes.
But that’s an overall blending, not a seasonal color analysis thing, I think.
When the warm highlights are really running the show, which isn’t 100% of the time, do I have a high degree of contrast that is both aging me and creating a striking coloring that doesn’t fit with the softness of Soft Summer? And when the light highlights are running the show, again not 100% of the time, I’m aging myself?
Is there anything to be done besides dying it? Which I staunchly won’t do. I feel like I hit the genetic lottery having hair that can “change” from blond to brown to red in the space of a day or a week. I’ve never dyed it and have no intention of doing so.
Kerry,
I see the other half of the post. You don’t live near Detroit, do you? These are really difficult questions to answer when I am not convinced you have your Season quite right and when I can’t see you.
There is no genetic lottery. I confess that I don’t understand what you’re describing between your hair and skin. I’m picturing Miley Cyrus or SJP hair. Close? Whose hair/skin is similar…though we still won’t know your Season.
It sounds to me as though you have spectacular hair that nothing from a bottle could approach or improve. The problem is that you don’t understand your skin (yet).
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You’re just so darn helpful!
From your first answer, are you saying that a person can’t have cool skin and warm hair? Or warm skin and cool hair? Even if both the skin and hair share the other two characteristics, like soft and light? I suppose the striking effect (as in exceedingly fair, cool, and pale skin contrasting with the orange-y red) might be more of a result from when I wear the wrong colors (I know! I know. But gifts and things that I just really loved that didn’t come in my colors keep weighing me down.)… I’m emphasizing the coolness or the warmth over the other? Or, as you mentioned, it might just be totally wrong.
As far as celebrities who share my hair color, I haven’t really seen any. The closest, I think, would be Jennifer Aniston in the early seasons of Friends, before she started dying it really blond and tanning. My skin is a little lighter than hers, and my hair turns orange-y red too, but the early darker hair color and into the first phase of her blondness are good examples of the idea of the range my hair takes. Miley Cyrus’ hair is waayyy too dark. Maybe like Sarah Jessica Parker. I’m not really sure which is her real hair color.
As far as living near Detroit (and therefore you), I’m way out in California. I do have family I visit in Northwestern Ohio every summer, and often fly into Detroit, so this summer might be an option.
A person can certainly have cool skin and warm hair or eyes. I do. These Cool + Warm combinations are found in the blended Seasons. The 4 True Season are “true” because they are absolute regarding warmth and coolness, and hair/skin/eyes all accord. So my skin is *relatively* cool, hair *relatively* warm. I’m a Winter with a trace of Autumn.
You’d enjoy an analysis a lot. I would clear up questions you don’t even know yet that you have. I am never here in July. Otherwise, plan the trip!
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[...] take a quick look at How The 5 Autumns Add Brown To Hair Colour – or to any colour, for that matter. There is an overlay of gray-brown. It is not orange, yellow, [...]