Olive Tree

#aba77c

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

#aba77c

RGB

171, 167, 124

OKLCh

72.1% 0.059 103.3°

CIELAB (D50)

68.0, -3.7, 22.9

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 5 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it.
  • It uses only 39% 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 48.3; on black, Lc -53.7. 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 5.0 — no blue cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.46:1 — fails AA

Black text

8.55:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at8.55:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#7c784f 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

#aba77c

protanopia

#a7a77c · ΔE00 1.6

deuteranopia

#a8a87c · ΔE00 1.6

tritanopia

#a9a968 · ΔE00 5.0

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isThimbleberry Leaf at ΔE00 1.073: between 1 and 2 — a trained eye spots it when the two touch; nobody spots it across a room. What the numbers mean.

  • Thimbleberry LeafΔE00 1.073 · #afa97d
  • Water ReedΔE00 1.293 · #b0ab80
  • Brisk OliveΔE00 1.295 · #aaa97f
  • Fond of FrondsΔE00 1.885 · #aba379
  • New BambooΔE00 1.977 · #adac84
  • Stuffed OliveΔE00 2.036 · #adac7c
  • Green Grey MistΔE00 2.043 · #afa984
  • Bamboo ForestΔE00 2.081 · #b1a979
  • Even GrowthΔE00 2.198 · #b2aa7a
  • CardamomΔE00 2.452 · #aaaa77
  • Lively IvyΔE00 2.465 · #b3ae87
  • Geek ChicΔE00 2.487 · #b0a677

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