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True Meadow

#287e21
Notes

True Meadow (#287E21) is a deep green with a cool character. It leans cool, sitting on the blue, green, and violet side of the wheel. Quiet and dependable, a fit for product UI and data visualization. Its HSL profile (115°, 58%, 31%) places it in the balanced band at a dark lightness. It works well as a headline, icon, or deep background in an otherwise light layout, pairing cleanly with cream, bone, and warm neutrals. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary violet. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#287e21
RGB
rgb(40, 126, 33)
HSL
hsl(115, 58%, 31%)
HWB
hwb(115 13% 51%)
OKLCH
oklch(52.2% 0.152 142.0)
HSV
hsv(115, 74%, 49%)
LAB
lab(46.29% -43.92 41.06)
LCH
lch(46.29% 60.12 136.93)
CMYK
cmyk(68%, 0%, 74%, 51%)

Etymology

True
adjective

Old English trēowe, faithful — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as the canonical version of their family. True red, true blue: the saturation is full, the hue is neither shifted nor adulterated. Sits at the center of the bold and crisp buckets, marking the unequivocal middle of any chromatic family.

Meadow
noun

A mid-height grassland — wildflower-mixed pasture too rich for tilled crops but too tame for prairie. The color refers to the average reflectance of an English meadow in June: a soft, slightly yellow-shifted green with the matte finish of grass blades and clover, scattered with the punctuation of buttercups and clover blossoms. Lighter than forest, warmer than fern, with the pastoral weight of a word from John Constable.

Closest matches

The nearest named color in three reference sources, ranked by perceptual distance (ΔE76 in CIELAB). ΔE < 1 is imperceptible to most viewers; ΔE > 10 is clearly different. When two sources point to the same hex they’re merged into one tile; click any to open that color’s page.

Variations

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Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

How this color appears to viewers with the four major color-vision-deficiency types. Computed via the Machado (2009) physiologically-based model. If a tile matches the original, the color reads the same to that viewer.

#287e21
Original
#817212
Protanopia
#776b2a
Deuteranopia
#167a6c
Tritanopia
#656565
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

The color used as foreground text against pure white and pure black, with the contrast ratio and WCAG 2.1 grade. Aim for AA (4.5:1) for body text and AA Large (3:1) for 18 pt+ headlines; AAA (7:1) is the gold standard for long-form reading surfaces.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon White
5.13:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AA Largeon Black
4.10:1

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