How to Find Your Color Season: 3 Common Myths Debunked

I know many of you are interested in color analysis. I have received many DMs, emails, and comments asking me to write on the subject. It is not a topic I am expert in… but I have talented friends who are!

I’ve invited Liz Thogerson, Founder of Rise Styling to share her expertise with the Wardrobe Oxygen community. This is part of a monthly series where I'll bring in experts to dig deeper into style topics you've asked about.

How Can You Tell What Color Season You Are?

Your color season isn't determined by a single feature like blue veins, brown eyes, or gray hair. Seasonal color analysis considers how different colors interact with your complexion, along with factors such as undertone, depth, and contrast. Below, professional color analyst Liz Thogerson shares three common color analysis myths that may point you in the wrong direction, and what she recommends instead for a successful experience.

Hi everyone! I’m Liz Thogerson, founder of Rise Styling. I am a professional style coach, and help women in seasons of growth, reinvention, and becoming. Let’s build a wardrobe that reflects your most authentic self, and evolves as you do.

I live in Atlanta, GA with my husband, two kids, and many struggling houseplants. My vibe is like if Dolly Parton and your childhood BFF had a wisecracking love child.

Let's play a game. I say “color analysis,” and you immediately think of vein color and eye color.

Blue veins, cool. Green veins, warm. Cool eye, cool. Warm eye, warm. Case closed, right?

Wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I want you to forget you ever heard it.

Here's the thing about color analysis — real color analysis, not the formulaic kind you see on social media — it's actually a science. A beautiful, nuanced, sometimes surprising science. And like any science, it doesn't care about internet folklore.

So today, we're busting three of the biggest myths out there, and replacing them with the real (much more interesting) evidence-based signs your body's been giving you all along.

Myth #1: Your Veins Reveal Your Undertone

What to Look at Instead

Every single one of us — every skin tone, every complexion — has natural red and pink areas on our face. Your lips. Your cheeks. Rims of the eyes. The veiny skin around your nose that gets a little flushed when it's cold out. Maybe some acne, a scar, a touch of rosacea (no judgment, we've all got something).

Here's what nobody tells you: those pink and red areas are the tell – not your veins. 

If your undertone is cool and you put a warm color near your face, something odd happens — you get sallow. The jawline, the temples, the naso-labial folds, the cheekbones – a greenish yellow cast subtly sneaks in. And that sallowness doesn't replace your redness — it highlights it.

But swap in a cool color — a burgundy, a teal, a good charcoal gray, a periwinkle — and watch that sallowness disappear, and with it, the redness settles right down. Like a breath of fresh air for your complexion.

Take Katie for example:

If your undertone is warm, and you put a cool color near your face, your beautiful pink lips go ashen. Sometimes gray-ish, sometimes hypothermic blue, sometimes a chalky white cast appears on the surface. Areas around your natural redness drain of color, putting all the focus on those pops of pink. We often see our warm-toned clients sporting red-rimmed eyes, like they’ve just had a good cry, simply by wearing burgundy or powder pink.

But swap in a warm color – a terracotta, rich camel, olive green, or coral – and suddenly you’ve come back to life. Your lips flush with color, your overall complexion unifies and redness calms.

Take Jacqueline for example:

So, your veins? They're doing their own thing under a couple layers of skin and fat, refracting light in ways that have nothing to do with your undertone. Bless their heart, but they don’t get a seat at this table.

Myth #2: Your Eye Color Determines Your Season

Why a Professional May Look at Your Iris Pattern Instead

I want you to really sit with this one, because it surprises almost everyone I work with: the melanin that colors your iris and the melanin that colors your skin's undertone are doing two different jobs, both genetically-determined, yes, but their roles in your season are very different.

Which is exactly why – when the full process is completed – we see Winters with warm amber eyes, and Springs with cool gray-blue eyes. That's normal. Your eye color was never the clue.

But here's where it gets good — the structure of your iris is.

The patterns, shapes, and colored features in your iris have a lot more to say about your season than the eye color on your driver’s license.

See little flecks of brown or orange scattered through your iris, like freckles? That's a telltale warm-season hint (hello, Autumn and Spring).

Got a bold, dark ring circling the outer edge of your iris — what we call a limbal ring? That's usually pointing directly to a “Winter influence” — think Winter, Bright Spring, Deep Autumn, or Cool Summer.

Here’s an example of one of our Warm Spring clients’ iris analysis:

It's not fortune-telling. It's pattern recognition. And while it’s not a reliable diagnostic test for your season by itself, after 6 years of collecting data from our color analysis clients, we can’t deny the correlation.

So next time you hear someone say “but she has a cool eye”, you’ll know better.

Myth #3: Going Gray Makes You a Winter

What Happens to Your Color Season When Your Hair Turns Gray?

I hear this one constantly, and I need it to stop, because it's simply not true, and it's robbing people of decades of beautiful styling opportunities.

Your season doesn't retire when your hair starts changing color. It carries you through the evolution.

Winters tend to gray dramatically — salt-and-pepper, steel gray, silver, sometimes straight to a stunning pure white. It keeps every bit of your coolness, which is exactly why your icy pastels and silver jewelry may suddenly hit differently.

Summers often soften into a tawny ash-gray, a steel gray, or a silvery “tinsel” blend — a gray that matches your season's whole smoky, hazy vibe.

Autumns usually shift into a tawny tan-gray or salt-and-pepper, and Deep Autumns sometimes land on a bold, solid soft white. Keep right on wearing your earth tones — they're stunning against those grays.

Springs tend to go blonde-gray, or pick up white “tinsel” slowly and unevenly. And of all the seasons, Springs are the most likely to want to add a little color back in while the grays even out — which, for the record, is a completely valid styling choice.

Your gray isn't a glitch in the system. It's still your season, doing what it was meant to do all along: helping you shine your brightest at every stage.

The takeaway: Your color season isn't determined by your vein color, eye color, or whether your hair has turned gray. Seasonal color analysis looks at how different colors interact with your complexion, including the effects of undertone, depth, and contrast. These clues can help you explore your best colors, but no single feature reliably identifies your season.

Can You Determine Your Color Season at Home?

Sharing this information is NOT meant to turn you into your own amateur colorimetrist, squinting into a mirror trying to spot sallowness and iris freckles at 11pm. (Although — no shame if you do. It’s FASCINATING.)

These signs are a small part of the process. An evidence-based way to get curious about what your body's been telling you your whole life. But the full picture — your verified undertone, your depth, your contrast, the exact colors that make you look lit-from-within instead of just “fine” — that takes systematic, trained comparative analysis.

If you're ready to stop guessing and actually know — no AI shortcuts, no filters, no online quizzes — grab The ColorKit™ for yourself! It's our original, viral virtual color analysis system, done right, so you walk away with real answers you can trust, and actionable recommendations for YOU.

Frequently Asked Questions About Color Analysis