Bright Spring / Bright Winter:
What Is The Difference?

I. Seasonal Characteristics

To understand the key differences between the two colour seasons, we have to first look at each one's colour dimensions:

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And it's quickly becoming clear where the differences lie: While both seasons sit at the brightest end of the value scale, Bright Spring is warmer and lighter than Bright Winter, which is cooler and darker.

These differences are also reflected in the two seasons' colour palettes: While Bright Winter's colours are a lot darker, more intense, and more contrasted, Bright Spring's colours are lighter in comparison. Similarly, Bright Winter's colours are cooler and blue-based, whereas Bright Spring's colours are warmer and yellow-based.

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Bright Spring Colour Palette

II. Bright Spring vs Bright Winter

Now that we know the differences in colour dimensions between Bright Spring and Bright Winter, we can identify what makes someone a Bright Spring or a Bright Winter.

Take a look at the following example: both of these women are clearly bright. Their colouring is very clear and saturated, and there is no sign of greyness in their features.

But the woman on the left is a Bright Spring because she has more warmth in her colouring, and her colouring is lighter than that of the woman on the right. The latter, in contrast, has cooler undertones in her appearance and the contrast between her features is higher.

II.I The Drape Test

If you ever have any doubts about your season, the best thing to do is to select the most prominent colours of the palette you are testing and drape yourself in them (or use lipstick with the same colour aspects).

For our purposes, we will use Emma Stone and Lupita Nyong'o as examples, and we will drape them in a few Bright Spring colours as well as Bright Winter colours side-by-side, to see which ones work on them.

We can see already that the cooler Bright Winter colour doesn't really work on Emma. The warmer pink, on the other hand, looks very harmonious.

Now let's see how the same colours look on Lupita.

Lupita is the exact opposite! She truly shines in the cooler pink, whereas the warmer pink makes her look reddish.

To make sure that we are seeing is consistent, let's drape the two ladies in some more colours.

The greens confirm our analysis. The more intense Bright Winter green is overwhelming on Emma. She looks much better in the lighter Bright Spring green.

Whereas Lupita needs the extra intensity of the Bright Winter green to make her shine. She looks washed out in the Bright Spring green.

And lastly, the blues paint a similar picture. The darker Winter blue is too dark for Emma. It highlights the shadows on her face. But the lighter blue looks amazing.

The opposite is true for Lupita. Although the lighter blue is not instantly bad on her, the darker blue looks more harmonious.

Therefore, we can conclude that Emma is a Bright Spring and Lupita is a Bright Winter.

II.I The Lipstick Test

If you are still unsure whether you are Bright Spring or Bright Winter, try the lipstick test.

Both seasons can comfortably wear bright lip colours, but Bright Spring cannot wear the cool pinks of Winter. In contrast, Bright Winters only truly shine in those more intense cool pinks. Warmer colours, such as coral, don't have sufficient intensity.

Just like we said, Emma looks better in the warmer coral lipstick. The cool pink gives her skin a pink tinge.

Lupita, on the other hand, shines in the cooler pink lipstick. The orangey one doesn't really do anything for her.

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