Lavender vs Purple: Which One Belongs to Your Sub-Season?

Lavender’s main shade is light, muted and blue. Lavender usually means pale and powdery, and four of its five shades fit that.

Lavender Blue is the palest, very light and just as muted. Lilac and Thistle are light and muted too, but they lean pink-purple instead of blue. So the family splits on lean before it splits on depth.

Then there is Floral Lavender. It is medium in lightness, vivid, and violet in hue. It doesn’t fit the “pale and powdery” idea at all.

If you have written lavender off as too faint, this is the shade to hold up first. If you find it too sweet, stay with the muted ones and watch which lean your skin prefers.

Purple itself is dark, vivid and pink-purple. Grape is just as dark and just as vivid, but it leans violet. These two carry the weight of the family.

Amethyst and Medium Purple are medium in lightness and vivid, one leaning violet and the other blue. Royal Purple is the calm one: medium in depth, medium in intensity, blue in hue.

So purple isn’t a single loud color. It has a quiet corner, and Royal Purple lives there.

From lightest to darkest, the five run Medium Purple, Amethyst, Royal Purple, Grape, Purple. No shade in the family is light, which is the first thing lavender has that purple lacks.

Two gaps are clear. Lavender is lighter. Purple is more vivid. The hue differs too: blue for Lavender, pink-purple for Purple.

On a face, the light, muted color sits back and lets your features lead. The dark, vivid one pulls the eye toward the fabric first. On a sweater, Lavender reads powdery. Purple reads dark and vivid.

What they share matters just as much. Both families lean blue in some shades and violet in others. Lavender Blue and Medium Purple both lean blue. Floral Lavender and Amethyst are both medium and vivid, both violet.

In my view, the name on the tag tells you less than the lean you see near your chin. A vivid lavender can behave more like a purple than a pale one does.

Four sub-seasons take Lavender only. Light Summer has Lavender itself in its palette. Soft Summer has Gray Lavender, a match for a very soft, grayed palette.

Light Spring pairs it with Light Lilac. Cool Summer has it close, with Cool Lavender as the neighbor.

Their axes explain it. Light Spring and Light Summer are very light, Soft Summer is very soft and grayed, and Cool Summer is soft to medium. A dark, vivid color asks for more strength than any of them carries.

Two take Purple only, and both are Winters. Deep Winter is dark, saturated and high in contrast. Purple sits close to its Deep Violet. Bright Winter is very bright with very high contrast, and Purple sits close to its Magenta.

True Winter is the one that takes both, as neighbors of the palette: Icy Lavender for Lavender, Violet for Purple. Neither is an exact match there.

Five take neither: Warm Spring, Bright Spring, Soft Autumn, Warm Autumn and Deep Autumn. What follows is borrowed from each palette, not matched. Warm Autumn and Deep Autumn use Cream for lavender, and Warm Eggplant and Eggplant for purple. Soft Autumn uses Warm Denim and Soft Eggplant.

For the home test, follow the setup in color draping at home: one color at a time, in daylight.

Lavender has six partners: white, light gray, navy, sage green, cream and mustard. White and cream leave it light. Navy sets it against a deep blue. Sage green and mustard bring in something earthier.

Purple has six too: cream, light gray, charcoal, mustard, olive and camel. Cream and light gray are paler than a dark purple, so the two stay distinct. Charcoal stays quiet beside it. Olive and camel pull it toward earth tones.

Cream, light gray and mustard work with both, so they are the easy place to start if you own one of each.

If your sub-season takes neither, put the stand-in from your palette at your face and wear the color itself lower down, away from your face.