The primary aspects of colour

I have talked a lot about dressing in harmony with your characteristics, and one way to do that is seasonal colour analysis. Along with that I also briefly mentioned the tonal colour analysis method. The tonal colour analysis method is based on the six primary aspects of colour: warm/cool, light/deep, soft/bright. Usually, a colour analyst who works with the tonal method will give you a tonal direction based on these six primary aspects of colour.

Remember that the seasonal method and the tonal method go hand in hand and they can be neither right or wrong. Here I will try my best to make these six primary aspects of colour accessible and comprehensible, and I will sum them up for each colour season.

First off, you need to know that these six primary aspects of colour are the factors of seasonal colour analysis, so you need to understand them. Let me break this down a little bit better.

The factors of colour analysis are three: hue, value, chroma. Each factor has two aspects of colour: hue looks at whether a colour is warm or cool, value sees if a colour is light or dark, and chroma looks at whether a colour is soft or bright. I will also tell you how to recognise the various aspects of colour by looking at your appearance in my next post.

Hue

Hue is the temperature of a colour. A colour can be warm or cool. Now, to determine whether a colour is warm or cool you have to look at the overtone. It can be warm or cool, and if you want to you can stop there. But, if you want to dig deeper, and have a wider colour palette to work with, look at the undertone of the colour. Do you “see” more blue or more yellow in a certain colour? If you “see” more blue it’s cool, and viceversa it’s warm.

Warm: the total absence of coolness, and you can usually identify it by seeing if there is any yellowness or oranginess in a determined colour.

Cool: the total absence of warmth, and you can usually identify it by seeing if there is any blueish or purplish “vibes” in a certain colour. Remember that black, grey and white are considered cool colours in art and fashion. You can consider certain taupes to be warm though, since they have a bit of yellow in them.

Look at this example, using green as a starting colour.

Value

Value is the lightness or darkness of a colour. To determine the value, you need to see how much black or white is in the colour.

Light: when there is an absence of darkness. Light colours, or tints, have added white to them.

Deep: when there is an absence of lightness. Dark colours, or shades, have added black to them.

We’ll use that same green from before to illustrate this concept.

Chroma

Chroma sees whether a colour has added grey to it or it’s pure. The two extremes of it are soft and bright. The amount of the grey in your colour palette will also depend on how much grey you naturally “have” in your skin.

Soft: when a colour has grey added to it, and becomes a tone. A soft colour, or a muted colour, is called a tone in art. Soft colours are cool tints and warm shades.

Bright: when a colour has no added grey to it. Also known as clear colours, they are often very vibrant. Bright colours are warm tints/true colours, cool shades/true colours.

The possible combinations for seasonal colour analysis

When you are given a tonal direction, the colour analyst will give you a combination of 3 primary colour aspects out of these 6 that I have mentioned. The first one in the direction is the most important and has to stay first, but the other two can be interchanged. For the True/Pure/Absolute season, all three aspects are interchangeable, since they are naturally balanced. This enables the True Season to wear the colour of all the seasonal subgroups as he/she wishes.

Warm Spring=Warm, Clear, Light
Light Spring=Light, Warm and Bright
Bright Spring=Bright, Warm and Light

Warm Autumn= Warm, Soft, Deep
Deep Autumn=Deep, Warm, Soft
Soft Autumn=Soft, Warm, Deep

Cool Summer=Cool, Soft, Light
Light Summer=Light, Soft, Light
Soft Summer=Soft, Light and Cool

Cool Winter=Cool, Bright, Deep
Deep Winter=Deep, Cool, Bright
Bright Winter=Bright, Cool, Deep

So, the seasonal wheel in this light looks like this:

Looking at the chart carefully, you can see that some groups have a colour aspect in common. In this case you can borrow some colours of the other subgroup that has the colour aspect in common, and still make the look work.