Autumn Colour Palette

In seasonal colour analysis, the autumn palette is the family of colours that are warm, deep and muted. Think of the season itself — turning leaves, conkers, moss on stone, spice and firelight. Every colour has a golden warmth to it and a richness that comes from being slightly softened rather than bright. Nothing in the palette is icy, pastel or stark.

It is one of the four seasonal palettes — spring, summer, autumn and winter — that colour analysis uses to group colours by undertone, depth and clarity. Autumn and spring are the two warm palettes; autumn is the deeper and more muted of the pair. Some colour analysts divide autumn further into sub-types such as soft or deep autumn; Colourcat works with the four seasons, so everything on this page refers to the autumn palette as a whole.

The palette's heart is earth and spice. Rust, terracotta and burnt orange lead, alongside mustard and old gold. Its greens are the season's signature — olive, moss, khaki and forest — and its reds are warm and brick-like, from tomato to a rusty brick red. Teal and a deep, greenish teal blue are the palette's blues.

Autumn is rich in neutrals, which is what makes it such an easy palette to dress in: chocolate, camel, tan and bronze, and the lighter cream, stone and sand. Chocolate brown, dark olive and deep teal stand in for black. The colours the palette does without are black, pure white and icy pastels — all too cool and too stark against warm, muted colouring.

Autumn colouring is usually warm and rich. Skin has a golden, olive or bronze undertone and looks best in gold or bronze jewellery. Hair is often warm and deep — auburn, chestnut, copper, golden brown or a dark brown with red in it — and eyes are frequently hazel, warm brown, amber or a deep green.

The overall effect is warmth with medium to rich depth and a softness to it. Earthy, muted colours echo that; pastels and icy colours can wash it out, and very bright colours can look garish against it. None of these are rules — many people are a blend of qualities, and the best test is still holding a colour up to your face in daylight and seeing whether it warms you or leaves you looking grey.

Begin with the colours nearest your face. A rust jumper, an olive shirt, a mustard scarf or a teal jacket does the flattering work; keep the rest of the outfit grounded in the palette's neutrals. Camel coats, olive trousers, cream knitwear, tan boots and chocolate-brown tailoring are the backbone of an autumn wardrobe, and they look richer still in textured fabrics — corduroy, wool, suede, brushed cotton.

Autumn colours are unusually easy to combine because they all share the same warm, softened quality. Try rust with olive, mustard with chocolate, terracotta with cream, camel with forest green, or teal with tan. Where you would normally reach for black, try chocolate, dark olive or deep teal — they anchor an outfit without cutting it in half.

For a whole wardrobe, build on a base of camel, olive, cream and brown, add your favourite autumn colours in knitwear, shirts and scarves, and let one deep statement piece — a rust coat, a forest-green jacket — pull things together. Gold or bronze hardware and jewellery finish the look.

Colourcat analyses the colours in each product's photographs and compares them with the four seasonal palettes to find the closest match. Every item in the grid below is one whose best match is the autumn palette, ranked with the strongest matches first, so you can browse a whole season of stock without checking each colour yourself. The season icon in the corner of each product image shows the same result across the rest of the site.

Colour in photographs is affected by lighting and styling, so treat the match as a strong guide rather than a guarantee. To read more about how the matching works, see What is colour analysis?