Says reader D.C. She seeks help determining her season, and also wonders whether she should make her hair darker or lighter. When a woman tells me she hates her natural color, I immediately suspect she's a muted season - i.e., a Summer or an Autumn. Those are the seasons whose colors are in-between, hard to describe, often nameless. We think with language; I believe we dislike in-between colors in ourselves because we don't have the language to conceptualize them. Here's the thing: If you think your hair is "blah," chances are the rest of your coloring is similarly subtle and blended. Putting Crayola-colored hair next to your blended skin will only make you disappear. Keep your hair as muted as your skin, and surround the whole vision with similarly quiet colors, and watch everything suddenly come into focus. Your natural hair color flatters you more than anything that could come from a bottle, and its subtle beauty is always revealed when it's placed in the context of your best colors.
19 Comments
Laurel
9/22/2015 09:52:00 am
This may sound crazy but many true winters are quite blah looking as well. I know because I was draped true winter a year ago. Without my true winter makeup I look quite invisible. My eyebrows and hair are kind of mousy and my skin is very pale. No one would think I look like a true winter unless I was made up but I was there at my PCA and I am definitely a true winter,
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Rachel
9/22/2015 11:12:25 am
Laurel, thanks for sharing this!
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kaguya
9/22/2015 11:06:19 am
Yeah, I'm a Bright Spring, but I look so blah without make up and my colors.
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zandra
9/22/2015 06:29:31 pm
yep.. me too. not a small surprise to find out I was bright anything. but of course.. now I rather have begun to like my natural hair colour!
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Tanja
9/24/2015 04:16:08 pm
Same here! :) Everything became naturally perfect, when I discovered my beloved bright spring colors. <3
Brittny
9/24/2015 03:28:05 am
What about eyebrows that are lighter than your hair? It seems to be a common thing with Softs and Lights. I can't picture Winter having difficulty with that - the advice for them usually revolves around 'please don't dye your hair lighter, your brows look dark and harsh' which I have seen personally with friends. But Softs and Lights...do analysts have a hard time telling them apart?
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Haydn
9/25/2015 03:07:31 pm
I don't think it would be that hard. I mean light seasons will look enlivened, or at least believable with blonde hair, and they have delicate fair colouring. Softs by contrast look ghostly as blondes as blonde hair seems too bright (unless it was like a dark mousy blonde). most soft seasons I've come across tend to have a natural tawnish/dusky colour all year round.
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Haydn
9/25/2015 03:09:43 pm
I have noticed that lights tend to flush easily, and their skin has a fair and translucent quality, whereas softs will have duskier tones and they tend to tan easily, is that a common pattern that you lot have noticed?
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Rachel Arnt-Schemmel
10/2/2015 09:24:58 am
I've noticed this as well. It's not true 100% of the time, of course, but it's a pattern.
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Rachel Arnt-Schemmel
10/2/2015 09:26:31 am
This is a great point. I can't think of any Softs, off the top of my head, who look better in artificially blonde hair than with their natural, darker color.
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Rachel Arnt-Schemmel
10/2/2015 09:26:50 am
It's like magic, right?
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Rachel Arnt-Schemmel
10/2/2015 09:30:29 am
It can be difficult to distinguish them.
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Rachel Arnt-Schemmel
10/2/2015 09:33:13 am
It's amazing how our correct clothes and makeup really bring us to life, isn't it?
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Anett
10/13/2015 10:21:26 am
Well, I think i´m a muted season. I have got medium blonde hair (but it´s not mousy blonde) and brown eyes. It is very rare combination and it´s difficult for me to choose a season.I know flame orange is terrible on me and black overwhelms me too. I have been told, that I do not look good in true white. But i can´t say what suits me. Yeah, and I have got kinda dark blonde eyebrows too. Can you help me figure out whether I am muted, please ?
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Rachel Arnt-Schemmel
10/14/2015 03:16:13 pm
Have you considered trying the home draping cards? It sounds like they might be able to really help you.
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Melina
11/26/2015 03:56:03 am
"Your natural hair color flatters you more than anything else" - one often hears this from seasonal color analysts, but to be honest, I can't agree (I wish I could!); I'm naturally dark blonde, but red makes me sparkle, my skin glow (and look a healthier colour), in a way my natural hair colour never does... Coppery, natural looking red that is, not an artificial red. That's something I've found out by a long process of trial and error over the years! :)
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Melina
11/26/2015 04:14:23 am
Oh, and that's not to say I'd hate my natural hair color, not at all, I think it's great (despite many people disparagingly calling such color "mousy" or "dirty" as in "dirty blonde"), but red is just more "me"... In addition to making me glow in all possible ways. I think I should have been born a redhead! ;)
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Vampierz
1/12/2016 09:12:29 am
I think it's not really the matter of CA type, but rather more of where you live. More of a mixture of culture (ideals of beauty, fashion) and ethnicity. Where I live most people have rather fair hair as children, but with time it becomes more 'mousy' and darker. I think most people, especially women, feel disappointed if the colour is neither definitely fair nor dark. Medium mousy blond is really hard to describe, because it's also neither cool nor warm. I don't think people with warm brwon, auburn etc. hair colours have such problems, or at least not so often.
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Hanna
3/30/2020 04:32:14 pm
I really disagree with the sentiment, that our natural hair color supposedly flatters as most. I'm a soft season (never really sure if Summer or Autumn, but definitely soft) and I remember reading somewhere on this site, that neither soft season is flattered by blonde. Well, my natural hair color is a really light golden blonde, that would probably look perfect on a Light Spring. And it totally does not suit me, it constantly clashes with my skin and really brings out the very subtle greenish undertones. And guess what a darker and more muted ashy blonde does? It really enhaces my face, my eyes, everything. It actually looks, like it was meant to be. If I compare pictures of that with pictures where I'm wearing my natural hair (same clothes, same light), my natural hair looks like a really cheap dye job. So no, your natural hair color is not necessarily the most flattering.
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