To provide a silver halide color photosensitive material excellent in latent image variation stability under environmental conditions and having stable and excellent color reproducibility, and to provide a dot area image forming method.

The silver halide color photosensitive material comprises a yellow coupler-containing layer, a magenta coupler-containing layer and a cyan coupler-containing layer, wherein each of the layers contains a silver halide emulsion having a silver chloride content of ≥95 mol%, the yellow, magenta and cyan couplers are represented by formulae (I), (II) and (III), respectively, and the silver halide emulsion contains an Ir complex and a metal complex comprising a group 5-10 metal atom of a periodic table other than Ir as a central metal and a nitrosyl ligand or a thionitrosyl ligand, also contains a specified compound or inorganic sulfur, and has been subjected to gold-chalcogen sensitization.