Free tool
Does this color work on me?
Pick a color, pick a season, and see the verdict — measured against the real palette, not guessed.
The Palettewell color checker answers whether one color suits one season. Pick from 36 colors and any of the twelve seasons: the color’s reference hex is measured in CIELAB against all 28 swatches of that palette, and the verdict — in your palette, wearable with care, or skip it — comes from that distance.
Check a color against a season
Burgundy on a Deep Winter
Burgundy sits inside the Deep Winter palette — its closest match is Black Cherry (#4A1526).
The color you picked
Nearest Deep Winter swatch
One honest caveat: this answers the color half. It assumes you already know your season — and if you’re guessing at that, the verdict is only as good as the guess. The paid analysis reads your undertone, depth and clarity from a photo and tells you which of the twelve you actually are.
Burgundy sits inside 4 of the twelve palettes, is wearable with care in 3, and lands on the avoid list of 5.
- Light SpringSkip it
Burgundy lands on the Light Spring avoid list, next to Burgundy (#5C1F2E) — it works against warm undertones at this depth.
- True SpringSkip it
Burgundy lands on the True Spring avoid list, next to Wine (#6B2138) — it works against warm undertones at this depth.
- Bright SpringSkip it
Burgundy lands on the Bright Spring avoid list, next to Cocoa Rose (#8D5F5A) — it works against warm undertones at this depth.
- Light SummerSkip it
Burgundy lands on the Light Summer avoid list, next to Espresso (#3A2A20) — it works against cool undertones at this depth.
- True SummerIn your palette
Burgundy sits inside the True Summer palette — its closest match is Rosewood Pink (#B96A80).
- Soft SummerIn your palette
Burgundy sits inside the Soft Summer palette — its closest match is Muted Berry (#9C5F76).
- Soft AutumnWearable with care
Burgundy is not a Soft Autumn color, but Mocha (#7E6A57) gives you the same idea in the right undertone.
- True AutumnWearable with care
Burgundy is not a True Autumn color, but Espresso (#43301F) gives you the same idea in the right undertone.
- Deep AutumnIn your palette
Burgundy sits inside the Deep Autumn palette — its closest match is Aubergine Brown (#4E2A33).
- Deep WinterIn your palette
Burgundy sits inside the Deep Winter palette — its closest match is Black Cherry (#4A1526).
- True WinterWearable with care
Burgundy is not a True Winter color, but True Black (#101014) gives you the same idea in the right undertone.
- Bright WinterSkip it
Burgundy lands on the Bright Winter avoid list, next to Dusty Rose (#C4909B) — it works against cool undertones at this depth.
How is the verdict computed?
Nothing on this page is hand-written per pair. All 432 color-and-season verdicts come out of the same measurement, run against the same palette data the paid report ships — so if a palette is ever retuned, every verdict here moves with it.
The steps, in order:
- Each of the 36 colors carries a reference hex — the textbook version of that color, so “burgundy” means one specific thing rather than whatever the reader pictures.
- That hex is converted to CIELAB, a color space built so that distance between two points approximates how different they look to a human eye. Distance in raw RGB does not — two colors can be far apart numerically and identical to look at.
- It is then compared against every swatch in the season: all 28 of them — the 16 best colors, the 6 neutrals and the 6 on the avoid list.
- The two nearest matches — the closest flattering swatch and the closest avoid-list swatch — decide the verdict, and the closest flattering swatch is what the tool offers you as a swap.
Why is the metric reweighted?
Because the standard version answers the wrong question. Plain CIELAB distance asks “do these look like the same color?” Seasonal analysis asks something narrower: “do these lean the same way?” A Light Spring can wear a lighter or a deeper version of their coral; what they cannot wear is a blue-based one. So the axes are weighted to match the judgement being made.
| L — lightness ×0.6 | Weighted down. A palette color at a different depth is still recognisably the same color family, and depth is the axis a garment can most easily shift. |
|---|---|
| a — green to red ×1.0 | Left alone. It carries hue information without being the deciding axis. |
| b — yellow to blue ×1.5 | Weighted up, because this is the axis warm and cool live on. Undertone is the first sort in seasonal analysis, so it gets the loudest vote. |
The worked example that forced this: warm ivory #FBF0DC and optic white #FFFFFF measure only 13.9 apart under the unweighted metric — close enough that every warm season would be told it can wear pure white, which is the single thing seasonal theory is most confident they should not. Weighting the yellow–blue axis up separates them properly.
What do the three verdicts mean?
| In your palette | A palette swatch sits within 22 units of the color, and nothing on the avoid list is nearer. At that distance the color and the swatch read as the same color, so it is genuinely one of yours. |
|---|---|
| Wearable with care | Nothing in the palette is within 22 units and nothing on the avoid list is close either. The color is neutral territory: fine away from your face, better swapped for the nearest palette shade when it is near it. |
| Skip it | An avoid-list swatch is the nearest thing to it, within 38 units. That means the color is doing the specific thing that palette is built to steer you away from at that depth and undertone. |
The bands are in CIELAB units, tuned against the real palettes: under about 22 a reference color and a palette swatch read as the same color, 22 to 38 as the same family shifted in depth or clarity, and beyond that as a different color altogether.
Why does one color suit some seasons and not others?
Because a color is not flattering or unflattering on its own — it is flattering against something. The something is your coloring. A deep, blue-based burgundy sits comfortably beside deep cool coloring and overwhelms light warm coloring, and the color did not change; the thing next to it did.
That is also why the average color here lands in the best band for about six of the twelve seasons and on the avoid list for four. Very few colors suit everyone, and very few suit nobody — which is a much less dramatic story than the internet tells, and a more useful one.
For the long version of any single color, Colors A–Z runs each one across all twelve palettes on its own page, with the reasoning attached.
Color checker questions, answered
How does the color checker decide?
It measures. Each color carries a reference hex, which is converted to CIELAB and compared against every swatch in the season you picked — the best colors, the neutrals and the avoid list. The nearest match, and how near it is, produces the verdict.
What does “wearable with care” mean?
That the color is not in your palette but is not fighting you either. It sits in the gap between the two bands: nothing in the palette matches it closely, and nothing on the avoid list does either. Wear it away from your face, or take the nearer palette shade the tool suggests.
Why does black come out badly for so many seasons?
Because black is a cool, maximally deep, maximally clear color, and only a handful of seasons have coloring that can take all three at once. On light or warm coloring it wins the contrast fight, so the first thing anyone sees is the garment rather than the face. Navy or a deep brown does the same job without that.
Do I need to know my season to use this?
Yes — the tool answers a color against a season, so it assumes you have one in mind. If you are guessing, the undertone quiz narrows twelve to six, and the full Palettewell analysis reads your coloring from a photo and names one.
Why is my exact shade not in the list?
The 36 colors here are reference versions of the colors people actually ask about, not a full color space. If yours is not listed, pick the nearest one — the verdict moves with undertone and depth, so a shade that leans the same way will land in the same band.