Are seasonal and tonal colour analysis the same thing?

In the world of personal colour analysis, you can’t have tonal without seasonal because tonal and seasonal colour analysis are exactly the same thing. A tonal colour analysis is merely a different way of talking about a seasonal analysis.

Clementburga emailed me, “Dear Kim, Does your colour analysis system follow the Colour Me Beautiful technique or is it something that you have devised.”

Simple method of colour analysis

Dear Clementburga, I teach both seasonal and tonal, they aren’t different, they’re the same thing, and it doesn’t matter whether you start with tonal or start with seasonal, you will always end up knowing both when you use my simple method of analysing colour.

In the world of colour theory, tonal and seasonal can probably be studied separately. But I don’t teach colour theory. I teach consultants how to use colour analysis as a tool to help their clients choose clothes, accessories, hair colours, etc., in their best colours so that they look and feel fabulous on every occasion.

You are free to choose

I don’t run a franchise, so consultants are free to choose whether they want to use the seasonal approach, or the tonal, or combine them, so with my training, the Fabulous Colour Analysis Course, you can then choose to:

• work with just the seasons
  • Spring
  • Summer
  • Autumn
  • Winter
• work with just the tones
  • Cool
  • Warm
  • Bright
  • Soft-muted
  • Deep
  • Light
• combine them together
  • Cool Winter
  • Bright Spring
  • Light Summer
  • Deep Autumn
  • and all the other permutations

Dominant learning style

Your decision will be based on your dominant learning style, what resonates with you personally, and what your ideal clients want. For instance, my dominant learning style is auditory so the tonal system makes more logical sense to me.  However, that system didn’t exist when I first learned colour analysis 45 years ago, so I had to fathom out how to understand the only system available – the 4 seasons – which works much better for visual learners.

Even when the tonal system came around, it was obvious that most women are visual learners and, as most of my clients are women, even though I might personally prefer the tonal approach, THEY prefer a seasonal analysis.

The tonal approach expands on the original 4 seasons by categorising people into 12 colour groups using the dominant colouring characteristic/direction

• Warm
• Cool
• Light
• Deep
• Bright
• Soft-Muted

and pairing it with a secondary characteristic to create a more nuanced palette.

They’re the same thing

The seasonal and tonal systems are the same thing.

• 12-season analysis is simply
  a different way of describing 12-tone analysis
• 12-tone analysis is simply
  a different way of describing 12-season analysis
• They both provide exactly
  the same result for the client

Image consultants who focus on tonal simply use different words to describe the same result that seasonal analysis provides. For example:

Dominant Light + Secondary Warm

• Tonal analysts call this Light Warm
• Seasonal analysts refer to this as Light Spring
• Both provide exactly the same result for the client

Dominant Warm + Secondary Light

• Tonal analysts call this Warm Light
• Seasonal analysts refer to this as Warm Spring
• Both provide exactly the same result for the client

What does your colour client want?

When you provide both, the client can choose whether to take away a seasonal diagnosis, a tonal diagnosis, or a combination of both to suit her own personality and learning type.

You’re probably fascinated with the system you use, maybe even besotted, but your client couldn’t give two monkeys as to how you come to your conclusions.

Women want to tell their friends which season they are because everyone instantly understands the concept of the 4 seasons. Not everyone ‘gets’ the 6 tones and you have to remember that we image consultants use these terms on a daily basis but those outside the industry don’t. They’ve probably never even heard of them before you introduce the subject.

A client may need a short discussion to explain her Cool or Warm or Light or Deep analysis to her friends but the big problem comes when you try to explain Bright and Muted!

• If you tell a friend that you’re Bright, she might think you’re bragging about the size of your brain
  • Most people do not immediately associate the word ‘bright’ with colour
• If you live in the North of England and tell your friend that you’re Soft, she’ll probably think you’ve lost your marbles because she may interpret the word ‘soft’ as meaning weak, daft, or foolish
  • Living in the North of England myself, this is why I choose to use Soft-muted for this tonal description instead of just Soft or Muted

The tonal words on their own often fail without the poor client having to explain in detail to her mystified friends but when a client tells her friends that she is one of the seasons, they immediately ‘get’ it because they can relate those four words to the 4 physical seasons that they have personally experienced every year they’ve been on the planet.

And if you and your client find value in the tones as well, then you can add one of the 6 tones as a descriptor in front of the season, e.g., Cool Winter, Bright Winter, Deep Winter, etc.

Every combination included

So, when I started writing my training courses, I made sure ALL learning styles, and how to work with the 4 seasons, the 6 tones, and every combination available, were ALL included.

Learning colour analysis this way means, of course, that you can’t simply follow a script because you are going to have to use your little grey cells and deliver the final analysis in a way that each individual client needs, so you have to take time time to understand:

• who she is (i.e., her personality)
• what she wants and/or who she would prefer to be
• and how she needs that explaining (i.e., her learning style)

Most image training companies stick pretty much to a script because it’s much easier to teach, and focus on draping as THE method of diagnosis, because it’s easier to teach one method, especially with a script. So to answer Clementburga’s question, “No, I don’t follow or teach any one specific technique at all!”

What I have devised over the years is how to:

• do colour analysis quickly
• use hair and eye colour
• diagnose with the drapes
• diagnose without the drapes, in the back of your head
• use 20+ other methods to colour analyse including skin texture, hair texture, personality type
• always focus on the client and NOT the chuffing process

In a personal colour consultation, if I’m spending more than 20 – 30 minutes draping my client, I am wasting valuable time because the consultation:

• should never be about the dratted drapes
• should be about presenting the analysis in a way that the client easily understands, has a fun experience, and learns more about who she really is (or could be)
• should definitely be about what the client is going to do with the results, information, and advice

In fact, my mantra is,

Stuff the system. Put the client first

Your client is only interested in the result SHE’s looking for – your best advice on what to wear and what to avoid so that she can choose clothes, accessories, hair colours, etc., in her best colours so that she looks and feels fabulous on every occasion.

So if the Brightest Spring on the planet walks in and she wants to wear Soft-muted Summer colours today, I need to get out of the way and show her how to look fabulous right now, where she is, wearing Soft-muted Summer colours that make her feel safe and comfortable.

After all, this lovely lady WILL be coming back to me for more so we can discuss later how she could move into wearing Bright Spring colours – but only when she’s good and ready.

And you can’t do that with a rigid chuffing script!

This is why I’ve been saying for decades,

“Stuff the system. Put the client first!”