Light Spring / Light Summer: 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 lightest end of the value scale, Light Spring is warmer and brighter than Light Summer which is cooler and softer.

These differences are reflected in the two seasons' colour palettes: While Light Summer's colours are more muted and toned down, Light Spring's colours are much brighter and more saturated. Similarly, Light Summer's colours are cooler and blue-based, and Light Spring's colours are warmer and yellow-based.

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Light Spring colour palette

II. Light Spring vs Light Summer

Now that we know the difference in colour dimensions between Light Spring and Light Summer, we can identify what makes someone a Light Spring or a Light Summer.

Take a look at the following example: both of these women are clearly light. Their colouring lacks any kind of depth.

But the woman on the left is a Light Spring because she has more warmth in her colouring, and her colouring is slightly brighter than that of the woman on the right. The latter, in contrast, has cooler undertones and some grey pigments in her colouring, which makes her appear slightly more muted.

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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 Scarlett Johansson and Reese Witherspoon as examples, and we will drape them in a few Light Spring colours as well as Light Summer colours side-by-side, to see which ones work on them.

We can see already that the cooler Light Summer colour doesn't really work on Scarlett. It makes her appear very pinkish. The warmer coral, on the other hand, looks very harmonious.

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

The opposite is true for Reese! She looks much better in the cooler pink, whereas the warmer coral makes her look reddish.

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

The blues confirm our analysis. The cooler Light Summer blue looks very disharmonious on Scarlett. She looks much better in the warmer Light Spring blue.

Reese, on the other hand, can handle the coolness of the Light Summer blue. The warmer blue doesn't look as good as the Light Summer blue.

And lastly, the greens paint a similar picture. The cooler Summer green is not as harmonious as the warmer green on Scarlett. It highlights the shadows on her face.

The opposite is true for Reese. The warmer green looks really bad on Reese, but the cooler green is okay.

Therefore, we can conclude that Scarlett is a Light Spring and Reese is a Light Summer.

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II.ii The lipstick test

If you are still unsure whether you are Light Spring or Light Summer, try the lipstick test.

Both seasons look best in light, colourful lipstick, but Light Spring looks better in warmer tones and Light Summers look better in more pinkish, cooler tones.

Scarlett looks much better in the warmer coral than the cooler pink tone. The latter doesn't make her look as vibrant.

Reese, on the other hand, shines in the cooler pink tone. The warmer red looks very unnatural on her.

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