Thank you for the info Steph ! That narrows it down. Based in the color swatches I might be a Cool Summer a bit more - I wear a lot of deep, jewel colors.

I had a lot of confusion over my best colors when I found YLF. I always thought with greenish eyes and reddish hair I must be an autumn. So to me that meant saturated colors like forest green, mustard, orange. Yet these colors didn't actually look so great on me.

Then I discovered the soft autumn category and it changed my whole way of thinking. Soft autumn is more delicate and muted colors work better. Now I look for colors like soft plum or muted teal.

I took my first class in design a few years ago and I love playing with the color wheel. Yet for the most part I like neutral clothing, with color in accessories. That's not because I'm afraid of color but because I respect how a little goes a long way.

I'm trying to keep an open mind here, and trawling through some of the links posted...

Honestly, I am even more confused than when I started. Most of the winters I see are not cool toned at all. Kim Kardashian isn't, and she probably comes closest to my coloring of all the celebrities shown. How is she a winter? Or America Ferrera for that matter? Both of them look very warm to me.

Lots of women have warm skin and black hair. LOTS. But we always get dumped in the winter category even though it's supposedly a cool category.

Please explain. I am genuinely trying to get this to make sense...

According to the Pretty Your World link, I wear colors from the clear spring, cool & deep winter, and deep autumn palettes. Visually I seem to be closest to their examples of deep winters, but again--I am not cool toned, and neither are many of their examples. Eva Longoria is quite cool, and has a completely different skin tone from America Ferrera.

Also, some categorize Aishwarya Rai as an autumn or a winter.

For those of you who have been studying this for a long time, please enlighten me and tell me what I'm missing. I'm genuinely curious.

I'm with you, Maya. WAY more confused than when I started! LOL I think I'll keep wearing colors I like, that I think look good on me.

Interesting posts! Since I'm a design student (art and fashion), I've studied color theory galore. I have also read countless books on color, both scholarly and fashion-oriented, including all the various reincarnations of the COLOR ME BEAUTIFUL books. My conclusion is that I have always worn the colors that I should be wearing simply because one look in the mirror tells me everything I need to know. I am a true 'summer' and I absolutely cannot wear ANY yellow-based color, including the oft-mentioned khaki. Cool, saturated colors have always worked for me. Teal, purple, turquoise, deep fuchsia and blue-based red are my color 'vitamins', as one book so cleverly words it. Complexions DO change as we age, that's when you need a lighter touch with makeup and a color consultation with your hair stylist before you consider how to cover that gray (or not).

When I was a pre-teen. I was told I was an autumn, which really annoyed me because it the 80's, and the colors recommended to me were definitely not IN at the time.

Now, looking at the websites, I'm still not 100 percent sure I'm an autumn (as opposed to a spring), particularly because some of the colors on the autumn chart seem to do nothing for me, like pumpkin (which I wore today anyhow) and mustard. And yet many of the colors I think flatter me, like olive and teal aren't on the spring charts.

I can't imagine that I fit into either season 100 percent or that someone can tell just by looking at me exactly what colors will flatter me best. I honestly think I know what works for me all on my own, and if I want to wear black, or brown, or yellow, or whatever, I'm going to do it because I want to.

I'm clueless about color theories. I try to select colors that make me happy and brighten my face. And I try to pay more attention to the warmth of the color than the color iteself. (ie I'll wear a cool red but a warm red doesn't flatter me)

I love color and always have...and even though most color theories type me as an autumn, i look awful in warm colors. can't wear gold, yellows, oranges, or most browns either. I've never liked those colors in anything, and once I realized they look bad on me I figured I just instinctively shy away from them no matter what form they're in.
I've got dark brown hair, but it's definitely got reddish highlights, not ashy ones. Dark Hazel eyes...I also usually have to buy one of the lightest ivories made when buying foundation, even though I don't feel like I look that pale. I tend to wear cool colors, like a true or blue-red. orange red is a definite NOT. i love jewel tones and black. I've tried to play around with color theory many times, have done many searches and looked through tons of websites and have never come up with a clear answer, I don't seem to match any of the modifiers. (clear, soft, deep) too bad they don't have a 'blah' category

Maya, I'll take a crack at explaining what you're coming across. The only real way to know what category someone falls within is to actually see how their skin/eyes/face "reacts" to certain colors. There are actually professionals who do this by putting different colored drapes on a person, to see which colors brighten that person's look. Based on that, they determine what category they fall into.

So I think that part of the issue with seeing celebrities who don't seem to fall within the category someone gave them is that the "expert" who did so really has no idea how that person would look if draped in different colors, and is therefore just taking her best guess on what category that celebrity falls within. There is a similar problem when we try to categorize ourselves. All of these charts point to hair, skin and eye color, but at the end of the day, those are just rules of thumb, and the only real way to know what category you are is to test out the colors and see which work best.

This is why I think a lot of us feel we don't need color typing: we naturally choose the colors that brighten us up and look best on us. So maybe for someone like you, it makes better sense to look at what colors you feel are your best, and work backward from there. I see that you did that, and found that you hit three different categories. That also makes sense, because a lot of these categories are hybrids and kind of "flow" between each other, so someone who is a deep winter, for example, should be able to wear some colors that are good for deep autumn.

I think that another issue is the whole warm/cool thing. Some categories actually aren't really "warm" or "cool" at all, but are actually more neutral. I know that the soft categories are like this, and I believe that the deep ones are as well. So that could explain why people who appear to be warm are falling into the cool categories. I have also read several places that say that olive-toned skin is neither warm nor cool, making it more difficult to categorize. I do agree that these categories are far more difficult to apply to people who aren't Caucasian. It often seems like people of color are just an afterthought. I'm actually having a lot of the same problems categorizing myself that you are. I'm okay with it because I feel pretty confident in the clothing colors I wear, but I would really love to have more direction with makeup, so I continue to play with it.

WOW!!!
So many interesting color theory essays.
I will not bore you (or myself) with mine.
I deal with color all day most days much like Angie deals with fashion.
In the end it is all about experimenting and developing a color sensitivity and aesthetic for yourself. I think almost anything can work if you mix things up in the right amounts.
Everything depends on everything else. Complicated? Yes and no. I think most people can sense their best colors. (With the exception of some very uninterested males that I know)

I agree with Jean. I am quite familiar with the color wheel and I mix hair color using my learned knowledge, then add a healthy dose of gut and visual expertise. NO hard fast rules here.
Change your foundation by adding yellow. or pink, change your haircolor...guess what... you are a different season..

It's worth mentioning that following color analysis can make it MUCH easier to mix and match clothes. Autumn colors tend to work with other autumn colors, so by sticking to these earthy tones I have a lot more options when putting outfits together. There are definitely exceptions, but it has certainly simplified things for me.