Writer’s Parchment

#e9d6bd

An orange that is nearly neutral — the hue shows only against a true grey. It is very light — it works as a page background, not as text.

Hex

#e9d6bd

RGB

233, 214, 189

OKLCh

88.5% 0.040 74.8°

CIELAB (D50)

86.7, 3.9, 14.9

What is true of this colour, and of no other

  • 54 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it — this part of the space is crowded, and the names here are finer distinctions than most people make.
  • It uses 41% of the chroma sRGB can show at this lightness and hue.
  • As text on white it measures APCA Lc 20.1; on black, Lc -83.3. 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.
  • protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 9.2 and 9.5 and 21.1 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

1.42:1 — fails AA

Black text

14.82:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at14.82:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#85745d 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

#e9d6bd

protanopia

#d8d8bd · ΔE00 9.2

deuteranopia

#dcdcbc · ΔE00 9.5

tritanopia

#e0e050 · ΔE00 21.1

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isAlmendra Tostada at ΔE00 0.439: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

  • Almendra TostadaΔE00 0.439 · #e8d6bd
  • Cake CrumbsΔE00 0.599 · #e8d4bb
  • BubblyΔE00 0.618 · #ead8c0
  • Laguna BeachΔE00 0.727 · #e9d7c0
  • Mown HayΔE00 0.77 · #e6d3bb
  • Steamed MilkΔE00 0.778 · #ead8be
  • Antique ParchmentΔE00 0.826 · #ead8c1
  • Speckled EggsΔE00 0.858 · #ebd6bd
  • Baked SconeΔE00 0.988 · #e5d3bc
  • Almond BrittleΔE00 1.012 · #e5d3b9
  • Minimum BeigeΔE00 1.046 · #e8d3ba
  • Nevada SandΔE00 1.081 · #ead5b9

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