The Red Lipstick: How the 4-season and the 12-season CMB's systems work

4-season-system

The 4-season system is quite clear, so it is relatively easy to say that someone is a Spring, Autumn, Winter, or Summer. Generally, your eye and hair colour (the natural ones) are enough to place you in the right season.

12-season-system

Distinguishing two people from the next palette in the next season in the 12-season-system can get more tricky, because you share a complexion with it.

Strong and rich: Deep Winter or Deep Autumn.
Light and fair: Light Summer or Light Spring.
Soft and muted: Soft Summer or Soft Autumn.
Clear and bright: Clear Winter or Clear Spring.
Cool and rosy: Cool Summer and Cool Winter.

This flow graph of the palette gives you the reason why: the palettes that are connected by an arrow are close to each other.

It will not be that important which specific palette you belong to, because lots of colours are common between two connecting palettes. However, it will become really important in the case of another bunch of colours, maybe because they are warm or cool, and they will make you look awful. I have tried to show it in the case of Deep Winter versus Deep Autumn.
The relationship between Deep Winters and Deep Autumns seems to be very similar to that between Clear Winters and Clear Springs: Clear Springs look good in lots of Clear Winter colours but, additionally, they also look good in others that Clear Winters don't, coral being one of the examples. It can become extremely difficult to distinguish between these two palettes because they look pretty much the same sometimes: both have eyes that contrast greatly with their skin and hair colour, something that can be enhanced by cosmetics and dyed hair.
Cosmetics (hair dye, make-up) can make you "transition" from one palette to another inside the same season. For instance, a lot of Light Springs are naturally some sort of blond, but they dye their hair red so, and make up their eyes with strong dark eyeliner, they will, to all intents and purposes, look like Clear or even Warm Springs. It is only in some shades that they will not look their absolutely best, but it's generally no big deal.

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