For the next few weeks I’m sharing some tips with my email subscribers about how to enjoy the unofficial fifth season, Faded Summer. I’ll also be sharing that info here on the blog, but it’s about a week behind. If you would like to join the list and get the info “hot off the press” (what is the internet equivalent of “hot off the press?”), and get other updates from the blog, just click over in the right-hand column or right here to sign up for your free Guide to Faded Summer – that will get you on the list for future emails!
Last week in the list we covered one of the absolute musts of Faded Summer – noticing and adopting the season’s distinct color palette. And I’m not referring to the colors of Fall, because Faded Summer is actually that in-between phase where summer flowers are fading but we aren’t quite ready for full-on Autumn. Rather, Faded Summer colors are distinctly their own!
When I was creating that free guide (because what new idea DOESN’T need its own free guide, right??), I started sorting through my many photos of “fading flowers” and used a color palette app to pull the dominant colors from several of them. I stitched those together (poorly, because I’m not a graphic artist), and came up with the ribbon shown above – the color palette of Faded Summer.
I think you can see it’s much different from the bold colors of autumn! It’s more the colors of flowers as they fade – when they’re not quite as bright as they are at their peak, but quieter and more muted.
When talking about Faded Summer, I always like to say that it’s needed as a “fifth season” because – well, kind of like the garden in late summer, we’re tired. And hot. And tired of being hot. And we need (deserve!) a bridge between the bright, tropical colors we tend to see and share in summer – and the bold colors of Fall that lead us into the onslaught of fourth quarter holidays and activities.
A visual “rest,” if you will, to create a transition from Summer to Fall that doesn’t feel like we’re on a runaway freight train hurtling straight into Christmas.
Of course, these colors find their way into our little universe in so many ways: clothing, home decor, cut flowers, and others. I do certainly encourage you to look forward to all the Fall and Winter activities yet to come, but also to take a few minutes seeking out and appreciating Faded Summer colors.
Maybe even adopt some of those colors into your decor or wardrobe!
