Value
How light or dark a color is, independent of its hue or saturation, from near-white to near-black.
Value describes how light or dark a color is, independent of its hue, the color family, or its chroma, the saturation. Sci\ART-style color analysis explains it with a simple test: imagine how a color would look on a black-and-white television, and its position on that light-to-dark scale is its value. In the twelve-season system, value is the dominant characteristic for four seasons: Light Spring and Light Summer sit at the pale end, Deep Autumn and Deep Winter at the dark end. It is also the main driver of a person's personal contrast level, the visible gap between hair, skin and eyes once everything is desaturated to grey. Someone whose hair, skin and eyes cluster close together in value reads as low contrast and usually needs a palette to match, while someone with a wide spread between light skin and dark hair reads high contrast and can carry more dramatic color combinations.
Why it matters
Value is the dimension most people underestimate: online quizzes fixate on warm-versus-cool and skip it, yet eight of the twelve seasons are actually defined by value or chroma rather than hue. Misjudging value is a common reason a technically warm or cool color still looks wrong.