Edamame

#9ca389

A yellow that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#9ca389

RGB

156, 163, 137

OKLCh

70.3% 0.038 119.6°

CIELAB (D50)

65.9, -6.1, 12.7

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 5 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses only 23% of the chroma available at this lightness and hue — there is a far more vivid version of this colour inside sRGB.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 51.1; on black, Lc -50.8. The sign is the polarity, which the WCAG ratio discards.
  • Built into an eleven-step scale, 10 of the 10 adjacent pairs stay ΔE00 2 apart — see the ramp.
  • tritanopia shifts it by ΔE00 11.9 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.62:1 — fails AA

Black text

8.01:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at8.01:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#737a61 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#9ca389

protanopia

#a2a289 · ΔE00 3.2

deuteranopia

#a1a189 · ΔE00 3.3

tritanopia

#a0a0a0 · ΔE00 11.9

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isFrozen Edamame at ΔE00 0.489: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Frozen EdamameΔE00 0.489 · #9ca48a
  • Zebra GrassΔE00 1.152 · #9da286
  • Solid SnakeΔE00 1.594 · #a1a58c
  • Medicine WheelΔE00 1.718 · #99a28c
  • HerbalistΔE00 1.779 · #969e86
  • GladeΔE00 2.014 · #9ca687
  • Big FishΔE00 2.242 · #99a38e
  • MeadowoodΔE00 2.249 · #9da28e
  • Flagstone QuartziteΔE00 2.256 · #9a9e88
  • Leek GreenΔE00 2.269 · #979c84
  • SageyΔE00 2.345 · #a2aa8c
  • Frosty CedarΔE00 2.35 · #a4a78e

11 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.