Cool Summer Color Palette: Every Shade With Hex Codes

Cool Summer, also called True Summer, is the purest cool season in the soft half of the system: blue-based undertone, medium depth, and colours that look as if they were mixed with a little grey and a little blue. This is the complete Cool Summer palette from the Tone & Fit app, 38 shades with hex codes, plus the five to buy first, the shades that dull you, and the metals for a cool undertone.

What defines Cool Summer

Cool Summer sits in the centre of the Summer family and is defined by temperature. The undertone is unmistakably cool, with pink or blue in the skin and ash or cool brown in the hair. Value is medium and chroma is soft to medium: colours should be softened, never neon, but they can carry more depth and pigment than Light Summer and more clarity than Soft Summer. Cool Summer shares its blue base with Cool Winter, its sister season, and differs from it in softness: a Winter blue is royal, a Summer blue is steel.

The palette is a coastal morning: muted steel blue, soft purple, dusty rose-mauve, cool sage, cool teal, periwinkle and soft violet, with a full band of mid-depth versions behind them and neutrals built from cool stone, lavender grey, heather and silver grey. If a colour must be cool and softened before it looks right on you, this is your season.

Still deciding? The Cool Summer identification guide lists the seven signs to check, and the summer colour palette shows how the three Summers compare. Also called True Summer.

All 38 Cool Summer colours with hex codes

This is the Cool Summer palette exactly as the Tone & Fit app stores it: 10 statement colours, 12 everyday midtones, 8 neutrals and 8 accents. Every swatch carries its hex code, so you can paste it into a shopping filter, a paint app or a moodboard. The app shows a filtered selection of these on your result screen so that no single hue family crowds out the rest.

Statement colours (10)

The ten shades that carry the season. Wear them as the main colour of an outfit.

• Cool Muted Blue#6E8CA0
• Soft Purple#9B7DB8
• Muted Steel Blue#4E7C9B
• Dusty Rose Mauve#A0728A
• Cool Sage Green#5B8A72
• Soft Violet#8870A0
• Cool Teal#3E7A8A
• Muted Warm Mauve#B08090
• Cool Forest Green#608878
• Periwinkle Blue#7E80B0

Everyday midtones (12)

Twelve softer versions for shirts, knits and layering. These are the workhorses.

• Mid Blue Gray#87A2B4
• Mid Lavender#B39DCA
• Mid Sage Teal#6D9F8E
• Mid Dusty Rose#C497A8
• Mid Periwinkle#7C99B0
• Mid Soft Purple#BBA5D2
• Mid Cool Green#75A796
• Mid Mauve#CC9FB0
• Mid Blue#84A1B8
• Light Blue Gray#97B2C6
• Light Lavender#C3ADDA
• Light Cool Green#7DAF9E

Neutrals (8)

Eight anchors for trousers, coats and bags. They replace the black and white that are not in this palette.

• Cool Stone#D5D0CC
• Lavender Grey#B3ADB5
• Heather#A19BA3
• Pebble Grey#C5C0BD
• Oyster#DBD6D2
• Mauve Grey#B9B3BB
• Slate Grey#A7A1A9
• Silver Grey#CBC6C3

Accents (8)

Eight deeper or brighter shades for shoes, scarves, lipstick and small doses of drama.

• Deep Blue Accent#4A6FA5
• Deep Lavender Accent#8E6C9E
• Deep Sage Accent#3D8B70
• Deep Rose Accent#9E607A
• Periwinkle Accent#5578A0
• Violet Accent#9674A6
• Teal Accent#459378
• Mauve Accent#A66882

Cool Summer power shades: the five to buy first

Start with these five. They are the clearest blue-based colours in the palette and the ones the app surfaces first for Cool Summer, because they harmonise with a cool undertone at exactly your depth.

• Muted Steel Blue#4E7C9B
• Dusty Rose-Mauve#A0728A
• Soft Purple#9B7DB8
• Cool Sage Green#5B8A72
• Cool Teal#3E7A8A

• Muted Steel Blue #4E7C9B: The Cool Summer colour: blue-based, medium depth, softened just enough.
• Dusty Rose-Mauve #A0728A: Your pink, with the grey and the blue built in.
• Soft Purple #9B7DB8: Purple is a Summer speciality; this version has depth without harshness.
• Cool Sage Green #5B8A72: A green that stays cool and soft at medium depth, rare on the wheel and easy on you.
• Cool Teal #3E7A8A: Your deepest everyday colour, and the one to reach for instead of black.

Cool Summer colours to avoid

Warmth and harshness are the problems. Coral, golden mustard, vivid orange, rust and camel all carry a yellow base that turns cool skin ruddy or sallow. Black and stark white are too sharp for softened colouring and create a hard edge at the face; slate grey, cool teal and oyster do the same jobs with none of the harshness. Electric, fully saturated colours such as fuchsia and cobalt swamp muted features even though they are cool. If a colour looks as though it has been mixed with amber, or has never been softened at all, it is not yours.

• Coral#FF7F50
• Golden Mustard#B8860B
• Black#000000
• Vivid Orange#FF6600
• Electric Fuchsia#FF00FF

Five shades that work against Cool Summer colouring

• Coral: Warm and orange-leaning; it makes cool skin look ruddy.
• Golden Mustard: Warm and strong, the least Summer colour there is.
• Black: Too harsh for softened cool colouring; cool teal and slate grey are your darks.
• Vivid Orange: Warm and loud; it overwhelms muted features.
• Electric Fuchsia: Cool but far too saturated; the softened rose-mauve above does the job instead.

Metals and jewellery for Cool Summer

Cool metals with a soft finish. Silver, white gold and brushed platinum echo the blue base of the palette; a satin finish suits Cool Summer better than a mirror polish because the palette itself is softened. Rose gold is possible in small doses. Yellow gold reads warm and can make skin look sallow. Pearls, moonstone, amethyst and pale sapphire all suit the palette.

Best metals: Silver, white gold, brushed platinum.

Sister seasons and neighbours

Cool Summer borders Cool Winter and Soft Summer. If you sit between two of them, wear the colours the palettes share and skip the extremes of each. The full summer palette puts all three Summer sub-seasons side by side, and the 12 colour seasons guide explains how the whole system fits together. Side-by-side comparisons: Cool Winter vs Cool Summer.

Frequently asked questions