— Autumn family · sub-season 9 of 12 —
Deep Autumn.
Warm and heavy — Autumn at its densest.
Also known as: Dark Autumn · Deep Warm
The Deep Autumn palette
Chromatic colors (28) and neutrals (4), generated in OKLab perceptual space from the Deep Autumn coordinate placement. Each swatch shows its hex code.
Neutrals
Where Deep Autumn sits on the grid
The 12-season system places every sub-season on three perceptual axes. Deep Autumn’s position:
- Undertone +0.3
- slight warm — the direction of the pigment bias.
- Value +0.8
- strongly deep — where the palette sits on the light–deep axis.
- Chroma +0.2
- slight clarity — saturation intensity, from muted to clear.
Axes are normalized from −1 to +1, sourced from the Sci\ART-aligned B1 coordinate synthesis documented with the open-source ColorMe project.
Character of the Deep Autumn palette
Deep Autumn (Sci\ART calls it Dark Autumn) sits at the Autumn–Winter flow border. The warmth of the Autumn family is intact, but the value drops significantly: this is the densest, most jewel-laden version of a warm palette. The coloring tends to substantial depth — medium-to-deep warm skin with bronze or olive undertones, hair that ranges from deep chestnut to deep burnt brown to near-black-with-warmth, eyes that are often very dark with warm flecks (dark hazel, warm dark brown, deep green-brown). The palette that frames this coloring well is nighttime forest in firelight: chocolate brown, oxblood, deep teal, dark olive, burgundy, deep burnt orange, aged brass. The chroma is still muted (it is Autumn, not Winter) but the weight and richness are unmistakable — this is the only Autumn sub-season that truly tolerates near-black. The mood is dramatic, weighty, almost gothic-autumnal: the palette rewards velvet, deep jewel tones, aged leather, anything with substantial visual density. Deep Autumn is commonly mis-typed into True Autumn, and the fix is usually to check whether pumpkin or oxblood sits more naturally next to the face — Deep Autumn needs the extra weight. The other common error is Deep Winter, where the fix is the undertone test: on Deep Autumn, warm burgundy looks correct; on Deep Winter, warm burgundy looks faintly muddy and pure black-cherry looks right.
Colors that flatter Deep Autumn
Chocolate brown, oxblood, deep teal, dark olive, burgundy, deep burnt orange, aged gold, warm espresso, dark warm plum, deep forest, cinnamon-brown. The rule is warm + deep + muted-to-medium saturation: every color wants to look as if it has been steeped. Deep Autumn also tolerates deeper warm reds that other Autumn seasons cannot carry — true warm burgundy, deep oxblood, port wine — because the weighted depth supports them. Metals: aged brass, dark gold, oil-rubbed bronze, dark copper.
Colors to avoid for Deep Autumn
Pastels of any kind — the palette's weight crushes them. Cool pure-grey neutrals look incorrect in temperature. Pure icy whites are too sharp. Very light warm pastels (peach, butter yellow) feel unsubstantial.
Telling Deep Autumn from its neighbours
Mis-typing usually happens at the boundary with a neighbouring sub-season. These are the two adjacencies most likely to trip up a self-assessment.