Deep (Dark) Autumn Color Palette: Makeup, Fashion, & Hair Guide 

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What goes into your mind when you think of the evergreen forests, the peak of the sunset, the falling leaves and branches of trees, and the nights in the ocean? 

The bountiful harvests of plums and figs, orchids, and dried flowers.

All the natural warmth left before we’re hugged by total darkness, and the cozy depth of the autumn. 

That’s dark or deep autumn.

Seasonal Color Analysis

You might be used to hearing about the traditional colors of autumn, but there’s another chart you should look into if you want a more personalized style. 

The seasonal color analysis gives a great sense of color harmonization and coordination so that each feature and color we have on our bodies gets highlighted and not drained out of the picture when we style ourselves. 

It uses the natural color of the skin, hair, and eyes to determine which color palettes to avoid and choose in terms of different aspects of styles we choose, like hair color, jewelry, clothes, and even living spaces. 

Deep Autumn Color Dimension

Your season is primarily based on two factors: hue and value. But to determine a more specific season, we add your features’ chroma. 

Since dark autumn is located on the darkest end of the autumn family and the closest one to the winters, it isn’t far from the cool tones but is still dominated by more depth and warmth.

To discuss how these dimensions differ from one another, here’s all you need to know: 

Hue

Hue is characterized by the warmth or coolness of the natural colors of your skin, eyes, and hair. 

Deep autumn has a hue that inclines toward the warmer end of the scale. 

Among the autumns, it sits closest to winter, so while there are adequate amounts of yellow, orange, and red in the deep autumn palette, tints of blue may still appear.

Value

Now that you’ve examined your natural hue, time to move on to the value of the rest of your features. This refers to the darkness or lightness of the palette’s shades. 

As for deep autumn, its value extends to the darker end of the scale, which means it has the deepest shades in its seasonal family. Pretty much like the dark warm colors of fall.

Chroma

The last dimension finds out how muted or bright your colors are.

Dark autumn saturation sits in the middle, so it’s safe to say that it has a medium chroma, or it’s neither entirely muted nor fully vibrant. 

The mixture of its warm hue and dark value, along with its medium saturation or chroma, is what makes .

Deep Autumn Comparisons

If you think you’re only meant to wear your season, then you probably haven’t heard of your sister palettes. These are the seasons or sub-seasons that stand next to you in the seasonal color wheel. They’ll help you discover how far you can extend your palette to include other colors. 

Once you know what aspects you share with your analogous sub-season, you can borrow some colors from their palettes and use them to add more flair to your style. 

The options are endless as long as you consider the necessary features and dimensions of your sub-season.

Deep Autumn vs. Deep Winter

Despite being on different seasonal families, the dimensions of these two are relatively alike because they’re basically next-door neighbors or sisters in the seasonal color wheel.

Deep or dark autumns acquire a hint of the clarity and saturation from dark winter, which can make you go for the deep grapes, deep blues, wine reds, and courtyard greens. 

Because of this, deep/dark autumn is often mistakenly identified as part of the winter family because of its value or contrast. But despite having attributes not far from the dark or deep winter, their hues differ. 

Autumns in general are warm, and dark autumn is particularly filled with warm and rich colors and gold or yellow undertones. 

Meanwhile, the winters are icy. Meaning, their natural pigment has a hint of white to it. And dark winter comes in as vibrant with a higher contrast. Instead of yellows, it has steel-blue grays, blue-blacks, and/or bluish black pigments.

Deep Autumn vs. True Autumn

If you belong to the dark autumn category, you possess the warm base of a true autumn, given that you come from the same family. With this, you can try out shades such as deep honey, deep red orange, or plums.

“They come from the same family and are both warm. What could be the difference?”

While they’re both autumns, there are differences that you should look out for.

To begin, true autumns have warm-toned skin, while dark autumns have neutral to warm complexions. 

In terms of contrast and depth, you can find more in the darker side of the family. This makes the deep autumn color palette relatively darker.

Deep autumn has the darkest shades that transition to winter, while true autumn reflects the natural shades of fall. 

Deep Autumn Characteristics

The seasonal colors require a more detailed assessment of your features, like your skin, eyes, and hair, and their colors against one another. 

So before you claim that you are a deep autumn,  let’s double-check your features in the simplest way to understand.

Skin

Common skin colors: Light, ivory, tan, medium brown, dark brown.

The dark autumn skin is known to be neutral or neutral-warm. They have varying skin tones that can go from light to deep, but all have undertones that may fall between the yellows.

There are some unusual cases of the undertones falling into the blues but if you’ll look closer, they’d still cling a bit more to the yellow. 

The warmth of your skin naturally makes any gold look good on you, or the neutral aspect in your undertone may also mean wearing silvers and even rose gold aren’t a problem; in fact, you’ll look gorgeous with them.

It is also common for dark autumn skin to have freckles that appear in chocolate brown or warmer shades of brown.

Eyes

Common eye colors: Rich hazel, dark olive, golden brown, rich brown, espresso, warm black

Autumns generally have a distinctively warm color in speckles or starbursts around the pupil and/or on the iris. 

As for dark autumns, this is where one of their dark attributes enters. You may notice that the contrast between the whites of their eyes and pupils is relatively high. 

Their most common eye colors usually play around the dark and warm shades of brown. But it’s not impossible to get them in shades of blues and greens as long as they’ll be on the warmer side and are saturated, such teal, turquoise, and dark olive. 

Hair

Common hair colors: Rich medium brown, chestnut, auburn, copper, golden brown, dark brown, warm brown-black

Hair is the second feature that keeps the richly pigment and warm colors of dark autumn. It typically includes warm, deep, muted, and rich shades of browns and reds with gold, mahogany, or copper undertones. 

It isn’t strange for this season to naturally develop bronze or gold highlights when they sit under the sun.

But since other seasons can also have the same highlights, like the red-toned ones for the winters and the golds for the summers, this shouldn’t precisely become your basis.

Contrast

The seasonal color analysis serves all skin colors. To guide you further, you can check your features’ contrasts in color. 

Deep autumn has the highest contrast among the autumn family, which leaves us with the tendency to have features perceived as either all dark or dark eyes and hair with light skin.

The best way to assess this is by converting your picture to black and white. Which dimension stands out, and which gets washed off? 

When converted to black and white, deep autumns show a stark contrast of dark grays to black against light grays to white.

The Deep Autumn Color Palette

Scanning through those different characteristics, some of you may have just discovered that this is the season where you belong. 

Deep, warm, and earthy, just like how you’d remember the distinctive colors of the forest and sunset during the fall season — that’s what deep autumn is all about.

Before you decide to declutter in search of a new signature style, let’s explore this season further.

It may be a season of dark elements, but it still has its fair share of lights.

And if we can only play with these colors accordingly, it’d feel like you’ve just hit the styling jackpot!

In creating a palette for the deep autumn, we must first get through with the neutrals because this is where it gets crucial.

Colors to Avoid

Light and cool are the enemy of your primary color aspects. 

And the seasonal color dimensions are the easiest way to tell which suits you and which do not.

To make sure you stand out and not stick out like a sore thumb, here’s a breakdown of what you should be avoiding:

• Hue — Cool tones or cool-neutral tones dethrones the golden glow out of your palette.
• Value — Your coloring may be dark, but going too dark can be overpowering. So is going too light!
• Chroma — Colors with low chroma/saturation don’t belong to the dark autumn palette. Pale and dull colors take the life away from your naturally dark colors.

To be more specific, pastels and desaturated colors don’t go well with deep autumn because these colors are too light, lack the shaded aspect of this season, and can make your natural color look off and sickly.

Cool, frosty neon colors like intense pinks, and blueish grays, can be too saturated for your medium chroma as well. These may be too harsh for you and may clash with your dark autumn palette.

Neutrals

They may look plain and dull, but neutrals give more dimension to dark autumns. Nevertheless, the undertones should never be taken for granted. 

Let’s break your best neutrals into two:

• Dark neutrals — The typical black with a bluer undertone isn’t for you; opt for dark greens or blacks with deep brown undertones.
• Light neutrals — Avoid flat whites, and start the lightest color from cream, then you can go to the warm khakis, caramels, and taupes.

Do dilute dark outfits. You can always use the light neutral palette to see which will give you the best contrast. 

Best Colors and Combinations

The best color combination for deep/dark autumns follows the highly contrasting appearance of its natural colors, specifically in value more than the hue. 

When choosing outfits, pairing light with dark colors or vice-versa is the best way to build contrast. You can also play with the different shades in your palette and natural features. But avoid adding too much accents.

Another way to dissect this sub-season’s different colors is to refer to the color wheel and look at opposing hues. Complementary, analogous, and some triadic combinations are good for you.

Monochromatic gradient looks are a no-no. Such style likely has little to no contrast and can drain out the color in dark autumns. The same goes for an all-neutral look. 

But if you really want to try it out and see the results for yourself, the best possible option is to attempt to match the darkest and the lightest shade in your chosen hue or neutrals.

Since you have your palette inclined to the warmer essence of fall, allow us to give you a preview of your best colors based on the literal aspect of this season:

• Red, orange, or pink — sangria, rust, copper, cinnamon, crimson, boysenberry
• Yellow or green — dijon, mustard, honey, dark green, hunter, emerald
• Purple or blue — eggplant, mulberry, plum, dark teal, aegean, ocean

Deep Autumn Hair Dyes

When dyeing a deep autumn’s hair, you must note that their naturally dominating darkness and warmth should be retained. These are something we can’t take away because they can quickly shift to a different season when altered incorrectly.

If you want to accentuate your hair in different shades, here are some color recommendations:

• Red tones — warm red, copper, or auburn shades
• Brown tones — golden brown, coppery gold, or chestnut shades

”Is there any way I can go blonde?”

Of course! Seasonal color analysis shouldn’t stop you from exploring.

Do extensive research to know the proper way to get your desired color. In this case, you’d want lightness toward the golden blondes, caramels, or roasted cashews.

You can also try adding golden or copper highlights to mimic or enhance your natural streaks.

Deep Autumn Makeup

Deep autumn color swatches shouldn’t be compromised when choosing makeup!

Our main goal here is to keep a balanced and harmonized color scheme between your makeup and the naturally deep, muted, and warm colors of this sub-season.

Complexion Makeup

Complexion makeup builds your base. Foundations, concealers, and bronzers are the usual products that are likely to cover the larger surface of the face, and the shades, therefore, are taken from the neutral side of your soft autumn palette.

Since the deep autumn skin tones land on the neutral to warm shades with gold undertones, they appear naturally glowy. 

And as the autumn rule suggests, give those foundations and concealers with pink or blue undertones automatically a miss.

You may be fortunate to grab well-matching colors, but having it in the wrong finish can still look off on you.

Generally, autumns are muted-warm. Opting for foundations and concealers in a matte or satin finish saves your muted attributes.

Eyeshadow

Less is more, and that’s exactly how autumn eye makeup pops.

Deep autumn eyeshadow leans on neutrals, like warm chocolate brown, beige, gold, and olive. They are the perfect transition colors but can also make a good wash of color for deep autumn lids.

Smokey eyes are the look to go for if you want a more striking look, and how else to smoke those eyeshadows out and highlight them than the dark, intense earthy colors in rich purples, browns, blues, and greens on your palette?

The best eyeshadow shades for deep/dark autumn are latte, mustard gold, military olive, camel, coffee, walnut, pickle, deep peacock, classic blue, smokey taupe, dusty gray, espresso, mahogany, uniform green, midnight blue, paprika, plum, cedar green, and evergreen 

Say no to glitters. But metallics, when paired with the mattes, can be a good focal point for a more sophisticated and bolder eye look.

Mascara and Eyeliner

Even if stark black mascaras and eyeliners have been a staple to almost the entire makeup-using population, they might be too harsh and too cool for your natural coloring.

But who are we to judge if you want to try dark mascara and eyeliner?

Here are some tips to keep you on the dark, warm color palette instead:

• For mascara — Brown-black shades are your best option
•  For eyeliner — The darkest you can ever go is the shade of a dark chocolate brown, but similar shades as your eyes can also make the color pop even more.

If you want to explore the dark autumn eye looks, you may explore dark and warm shades of gray, green, and blue.

Mascara shades: plum, military olive, hot fudge, green gables, and dark sea

Eyeliner shades: hot fudge, scarab, and moonless

Blush and Lips

Look at the deep autumn color wheel and locate the pinks, peaches, reds, and even browns — this is the range where the color of your lips and cheeks are found.

The right shade of your blush and lipstick depends on the depth of your features. You would want to avoid too much shine, gloss, and shimmer, however. 

Light features

• Blush — Lighter browns and pinkish reds are for you. But don’t rely on the soft pinks that can be too cool for you.
• Lipstick — Warm pinks, reds, and browns with a hint of burnt oranges. 

Dark features

• Blush — Rich and warm coral, peach, and copper complement you, but so do the darker reddish and brown tones.
• Lipstick — Darkest warm shades of reds and browns like wine, raisin, and espresso.

When choosing your lip color, skip the depth-clashing nudes, cool pinks, and berry reds, and pick the vampy, spicy, and brown tones. 

Best blush shades for dark/deep autumn are butterum, sunburn, spiced coral, sun baked, copper coin, blooming dahlia, burnt sienna, cranberry, and burnt russet

Best lipstick shades for dark/deep autumn are coral, spiced coral, cranberry, burgundy, ruby, red orange, chili, blood red, picante, dark brown, wine, crimson, paprika, pomegranate, and windsor wine

Bronzer

The three autumn seasons are all glowy on their own, but the right shade of bronzer and amount of sheen can bring out its best quality. 

Dark autumn has high contrast, low lighting and darker shadows. Therefore, richer and deeper shades of bronzers that aren’t overwhelmingly shimmery are the best for the golden goddess glow.

Colors that are too muted, bright, soft, and orangey can drain the natural deepness of deep autumn. Doing a series of trials and errors is the key!

Best bronzer shades for dark/deep autumn are latte, butterum, sunburn, sun baked, copper coin, and madder brown

Deep Autumn Nail Polish

Your nails can add extra oomph to your look. Make sure you’ve got them all glammed up by painting your nails the deep autumn way.

You can go anywhere from the light neutral creams, beiges, and caramels to the warm, dark, and vivid shades of brown, red, orange, green, and purple. 

The best nail polish shades for deep/dark autumns are warm beige, bronze, warm brown, wood, metallic brown, mustard gold, tangerine, pumpkin, burgundy, sangria, yellow-green, and metallic pine.

Deep Autumn Style

Deep Autumn Wardrobe

Determining your color palette is one thing; creating an entire deep autumn wardrobe is another. 

Let’s start with one of the many modern staples of fashion: denim. 

As a dark autum, dark-blue denim will fit you like a glove. But you can also opt for solid finishes but nothing super worn or faded.

Tweed or wool is your go-to if you want to soften out your looks a bit. 

Deep Autumn Prints and Patterns

Want to level up your wardrobe? Try on different prints and patterns that go within your season! 

You have two essential things to consider: first, the deep autumn shades; second, the literal elements of this season.

Of course, what else should be the show’s star other than what would flatter you the most? This season’s colors should be the fabric’s primary color, or the pattern should have them as the most prominent colors.

When choosing the design, here are some tips to consider:

• It’s automatically a “yes” if the print has an autumn element.
• When choosing geometric designs, always go for circles and ovals.
• Dark-colored backgrounds go well with small patterns due to their contrast.
• Small elements are recommended, but they should not be dense.
• If there are going to be medium to extensive details on the pattern, make sure that they’re loosely arranged.

Although we can’t say no to florals, be careful when choosing the design. You may get in the direction of a different subset of autumn or a different season entirely if you don’t stick with dark fall-season florals.

If you want to go for animal prints, leopard prints are the most flattering for you.

Deep Autumn Jewelry and Accessories

If there’s one thing deep autumns should worry about the least, it’s the color of your jewelry.

Since many deep autumns stand on the neutral side, it usually won’t matter if the accessories are gold, brass, copper, bronze, silver, or white gold; it’ll work with your natural colors. 

But if you go with the silvers, ensure they’re on the warmer side and not the very cool, close-to-blue ones.

However, it would be best if you watched out for their reflectiveness so they don’t steal the attention from your face. Matte or less reflective metals complement deep autumns best, as well as the antique, oxidized, and hammered types.

If you’re into stones, those with warm red or yellow tones are for you. Consider garnet, red jasper, heliodor, and sphene. 

You can also collect pieces of leather and dark, wooden jewelry just to spice up your style!

Deep Autumn Shoes

Your shoes shouldn’t be left behind when putting together a dark autumn outfit. Make sure you’ve ticked every fashionable item of your season!

And the best way to pick shoes is to pair them with your natural hair color. Beware of dull brown footwear. Specific shades of brown are within your deep spectrum, such as cognac and bitter chocolate.

FAQs

There’s no highlighter mentioned on the dark autumn makeup. Does that mean I can’t wear one?

If there’s one more thing to consider when creating a dark autumn makeup look, it’s that highlighters are not really necessary in this sub-season because we’re all about creating lowlights. 

You can do the bronzing and contouring for the added shade and shadow, but highlighters may counter this effect. 

However, if you really feel like using a highlighter to complete your look, go for gold — literally! A subtle golden glow is ideal.

Is there a makeup trick you can share with dark autumns?

When experimenting with makeup, aim for a blended look. Tone-on-tone layering using warm, dark hues and adequate accents with the right finish can make everything more put together and not washed off. 

What happens if I go too light blonde?

Getting lighter shades of blonde may sound like it eliminates your depth if it’s too close to your skin color. 

While deep/dark autumns generally look iconic in deep warm shades, pale creamy yellows do belong in the dark autumn palette. 

The resulting look may not seem like dark autumn anymore, but you will definitely rock light blonde due to the warmth of your skin. 

If you want to stay in the dark autumn spectrum, try golden blondes, caramels, or roasted cashews.

What did you learn from this guide? Let us know in the comments!

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