Soft Summer Color Palette: Every Shade With Hex Codes

Soft Summer is the most muted season in the system: cool but gently so, medium in depth, and at its best in colours that look as if they were mixed with a generous amount of grey. This is the complete Soft Summer palette from the Tone & Fit app, 38 shades with hex codes, plus the five to buy first, the colours that fight you, and the metals that suit a soft cool undertone.

What defines Soft Summer

Soft Summer is defined by chroma: it is muted before it is anything else, and clear, saturated colours overwhelm it while greyed, dusty versions of the same hues look natural. The undertone is cool, but only mildly, which puts Soft Summer on the border with Soft Autumn, its warm sister; the two share their softness and differ by a drop of blue against a drop of gold. Depth is medium, with hair, skin and eyes that blend into each other rather than contrasting.

The palette is fog over water: muted blue-grey, soft purple, dusty rose, cool sage, slate blue, periwinkle and rose-grey, with a band of softer midtones behind them and neutrals built from mist grey, taupe grey, ash and pewter. Compared with Cool Summer it is greyer and quieter; compared with Soft Autumn it is cooler and pinker. Soft Summer neutrals are unusually wearable as main colours because they are so close to the season's own colouring.

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

All 38 Soft Summer colours with hex codes

This is the Soft 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.

• Muted Blue Gray#7A8E99
• Muted Soft Purple#9E8BAA
• Muted Cool Sage#6B8F7A
• Muted Dusty Rose#A4848E
• Muted Steel Blue#6D899E
• Muted Periwinkle#8A8AA8
• Muted Cool Green#749080
• Muted Pink Mauve#B09090
• Muted Slate Blue#7888A0
• Muted Rose Gray#A89898

Everyday midtones (12)

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

• Soft Blue Gray#9AABB7
• Soft Lilac#B5A3C1
• Soft Cool Sage#8AAF9A
• Soft Dusty Rose#C2A5AD
• Soft Periwinkle#8FA1B2
• Soft Lavender#BDA8C9
• Soft Cool Green#92B7A2
• Soft Mauve#CCA8B5
• Soft Blue#97A9BA
• Soft Purple#C5B0D1
• Soft Mint Sage#9ABFAA
• Soft Pink#D4B0BD

Neutrals (8)

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

• Mist Grey#D0CBC8
• Taupe Grey#B8B2AF
• Ash#A6A09D
• Fog#C4BFBC
• Pearl Grey#D6D1CE
• Mushroom Grey#BEB8B5
• Pewter Taupe#ACA6A3
• Soft Stone#CAC5C2

Accents (8)

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

• Deep Cool Blue#5C7A8A
• Deep Soft Purple#8A7399
• Deep Cool Sage#5A876F
• Deep Dusty Rose#996D7C
• Deep Periwinkle#607D93
• Deep Violet#9278A1
• Deep Teal Green#628F77
• Deep Mauve#A17584

Soft Summer power shades: the five to buy first

Start with these five. They are the softened cool colours the app surfaces first for Soft Summer, because they sit at exactly your depth and chroma and let your features come forward.

• Muted Blue-Grey#7A8E99
• Muted Soft Purple#9E8BAA
• Muted Dusty Rose#A4848E
• Muted Cool Sage#6B8F7A
• Muted Slate Blue#7888A0

• Muted Blue-Grey #7A8E99: The Soft Summer colour: cool, greyed and exactly as quiet as your own colouring.
• Muted Soft Purple #9E8BAA: Purple with the volume turned down; it looks sophisticated rather than sweet on you.
• Muted Dusty Rose #A4848E: Your pink: rose mixed with grey, and the shade that makes soft skin look freshest.
• Muted Cool Sage #6B8F7A: The green that stays cool and soft at once; warmer or clearer greens look wrong immediately.
• Muted Slate Blue #7888A0: Your dark, and still soft enough not to draw a hard line at the face.

Soft Summer colours to avoid

Two things fight Soft Summer colouring: saturation and warmth. Neon orange, electric blue and true fuchsia are so loud that your features recede behind them. Golden mustard, rust and camel carry a yellow base that turns cool skin sallow. Stark white and jet black are the most common wardrobe defaults and both are too harsh for you: pearl grey, mist, slate blue and pewter taupe do the same jobs and look like they belong. If a colour has never been softened, it is not yours.

• Neon Orange#FF4500
• Electric Blue#0000FF
• Stark White#FFFFFF
• Jet Black#000000
• Golden Mustard#DAA520

Five shades that work against Soft Summer colouring

• Neon Orange: Warm and loud, the two things this palette never is.
• Electric Blue: Cool but far too saturated; it makes muted features disappear.
• Stark White: Too crisp; pearl grey and mist are your whites.
• Jet Black: Too harsh; slate blue and pewter taupe keep the look soft.
• Golden Mustard: Warm and strong; it turns cool skin sallow.

Metals and jewellery for Soft Summer

Softened cool metals. Brushed silver, pewter and a soft rose gold echo the muted finish of the palette; mirror-polished silver can look too sharp against it. Yellow gold reads warm and brassy. Moonstone, grey pearls, labradorite and pale amethyst suit the palette better than anything bright or faceted.

Best metals: Brushed silver, pewter, soft rose gold.

Sister seasons and neighbours

Soft Summer borders Soft Autumn and Cool 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.

Frequently asked questions