The Expanded Seasonal Method

This page is written for image consultants and for anyone training to become one. If you are looking for your own palette rather than the method behind it, start with our beginner's guide.

What is the Expanded Seasonal Method?

The Expanded Seasonal Method divides the four classic seasons — Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter — into three sub-palettes each, for twelve in total. It is the method Deh Martini has taught for nearly twenty years and the method every Color Craft material is built around.

Twelve, not sixteen. Each season carries exactly three sub-palettes, and there is a reason the number lands there: three axes, one leading each.

What are the three axes?

Every palette in the method is described by the same three axes. A reading is the work of placing a face on all three.

Axis	Runs from	What it reads
Intensity	soft to bright	how much clarity the face can carry before color starts to compete with it
Temperature	warm to cool	the undertone beneath the surface of the skin
Depth	light to dark	how light or deep the overall coloring sits

A note on vocabulary, because it differs from other systems. This method names the third axis depth. Value and chroma are not used as teaching terms here.

Which axis leads each palette?

One axis leads in every palette. That leading axis is what separates a palette from its two neighbors inside the same season — and it is the single most useful thing to hold in mind during a reading.

The structure is symmetrical: every season contains one palette led by intensity, one led by temperature and one led by depth.

Why do two palettes get confused, and which axis settles it?

Palettes are rarely confused with their own neighbors inside a season. They are confused across seasons — with the palette in another family that shares the same leading characteristic.

That shared characteristic is exactly what makes them look alike. So it cannot be the thing that separates them. The axis they do not share is the one that settles it.

Pair	What they share	What settles it
Cool Summer and Cool Winter	Both are decisively cool — the same blue base	Intensity and depth. Summer is softer and lighter; Winter is clearer and deeper.
Soft Summer and Soft Autumn	Both are muted — gray blended into the color	Temperature. Soft Summer's muted shades are blue-based; Soft Autumn's are gold-based.

This is why a reading is never finished on one axis. Establishing that a client is cool narrows twelve palettes to four, and no further. The remaining axes are what close the distance.

It is also why appearance is not enough. Assuming a palette from hair and eye color is the most common error in this field, and it happens to experienced professionals too — the reliable answer comes from testing all three axes with real fabric in neutral light.

The order in which those tests are run, and the criteria used to decide when two drapes look close, are taught with supervised practice in the certification rather than from a page.

How is a palette determined?

Undertone comes first. Undertone determines the palette, and everything else in the reading refines which of the three sub-palettes within that season applies.

That hierarchy is why a tan does not change a palette. A tan adds a surface layer of color above the undertone; it does not touch the undertone itself. The full explanation is here.

What conditions does an accurate reading require?

Three conditions do most of the work, and getting them wrong is the most common reason a reading comes out unreliable.

• Light. Use neutral light reaching up to 5500K, as close to natural daylight as the room allows.
• Skin. Wait 30 to 60 days after sun exposure, so cell renewal has cleared the surface layer.
• The consultant. Neutral clothing, or a smock. Colored clothing is not forbidden, but it competes with the drape.

Have every drape sorted by category before the client arrives. More on setting up the space.

A palette is not a prison

This is where the method parts company with most of what is written about seasonal color. A palette does not subtract from a wardrobe — it refines it.

Every color exists in every one of the twelve palettes. What changes is the tone: the green that belongs to Dark Autumn and the green that belongs to Bright Winter are both green. Naming a color forbidden would contradict the method itself.

So the palette is a tool for choosing well, not a rule for refusing. Where it lands on a given client, and how far it bends to her life and her own eye, stays her decision. More on that here.

Where the method is taught

Deh Martini is an image consultant, colorist and personal stylist, trained in Image Consulting and Personal Color Analysis at FIT — Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. She has trained more than 5,000 consultants.

The method is taught in the Personal Color Analysis Certification, and the materials it is read with are the Full Drapes Set and the Color Palette Fan Set.

Frequently asked questions