A Frond in Need
#9f9978
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
#9f9978
RGB
159, 153, 120
OKLCh
67.9% 0.047 98.9°
CIELAB (D50)
63.1, -1.8, 18.3
What is true of this colour, and of no other
- 4 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
- It uses only 33% 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 55.0; on black, Lc -46.8. 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 8.0 — no blue cone.
Text on this colour
White text
2.88:1 — fails AA
Black text
7.30:1 — passes AA
Black text is the better of the two at7.30:1. That is enough for body text.
As text on white, it needs to change
#7d7757 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.
The same colour, with one cone missing
As you see it
#9f9978
protanopia
#9a9a78 · ΔE00 2.8
deuteranopia
#9b9b78 · ΔE00 2.8
tritanopia
#9c9c5a · ΔE00 8.0
The twelve nearest named colours
Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isTallow at ΔE00 1.854: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.
- TallowΔE00 1.854 · #a39977
- Dusky MeadowsΔE00 1.91 · #a39b7e
- Wheat TortillaΔE00 1.964 · #a49a79
- Slate BrownΔE00 1.993 · #a0987c
- Wetland StoneΔE00 2.004 · #a49f80
- Grey OliveΔE00 2.114 · #a19a7f
- Cross CountryΔE00 2.215 · #a5a080
- Sweet AnnieΔE00 2.279 · #9c946e
- HillaryΔE00 2.291 · #a7a07e
- CricketΔE00 2.322 · #a6a081
- Artichoke DipΔE00 2.512 · #a19676
- California RollΔE00 2.534 · #a09574
12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.