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Saturated Thaw Forest

#2e9a33
Notes

Saturated Thaw Forest (#2E9A33) is a true green with an earthy character. It leans grounded and natural, the kind of color that plays well with wood, clay, linen, and warm neutrals. Its HSL profile (123°, 54%, 39%) places it in the balanced band at a mid lightness. It works across type, buttons, and borders, saturated enough to feel deliberate but balanced enough to not fight the rest of the palette. 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
#2e9a33
RGB
rgb(46, 154, 51)
HSL
hsl(123, 54%, 39%)
HWB
hwb(123 18% 40%)
OKLCH
oklch(60.4% 0.171 143.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3130 0.5955 0.2577)
HSV
hsv(123, 70%, 60%)
LAB
lab(56.02% -50.97 43.86)
LCH
lch(56.02% 67.24 139.29)
CMYK
cmyk(70%, 0%, 67%, 40%)

Etymology

Saturated
adjective

From the Latin saturatus, past participle of saturare, to fill. A technical color term in modern usage — saturation is one of the three axes of HSL (with hue and lightness). As a modifier, saturated implies that the hue is at or near its maximum chromatic intensity. Sits at the bold-and-bright top of the grid.

Thaw
modifier

Old English thawian, to-melt-or-soften. As a color modifier, thaw implies a spring-melt-and-softening-frost quality, the visual register of English-spring-and-Pennine-thaw hand-spring-melt-and-softening-frost English-spring-and-Pennine-thaw-and-Cumbria-Highland-thaw thaw-and-spring-melt-and-softening-frost surfaces under English-spring-and-Pennine-thaw-and-Cumbria-Highland-thaw Yorkshire-Dales-and-Lake-District-and-Cairngorm spring-melt-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to slush and rain in usage.

Forest
noun

The dense canopy of a temperate or tropical woodland — oak, beech, pine, eucalyptus, mahogany — wherever leaves close above to filter the light below. Forest green refers to the average reflectance of a healthy mid-summer canopy seen from below: a saturated, slightly muted green with the matte finish of layered chlorophyll. Deeper than fern, cooler than olive, with the ecological weight of a word that has named every wooded biome on Earth.

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

Click any swatch to explore

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.

#2e9a33
Original
#9d8c26
Protanopia
#90833c
Deuteranopia
#0c9685
Tritanopia
#7c7c7c
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).
AA Largeon White
3.63:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
5.79:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

The CSS Color 4 wide-gamut form of this color. Both swatches render the same color on every display — the P3 form only diverges from sRGB when a designer pushes channels outside sRGB's reach.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##2E9A33
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3130 0.5955 0.2577)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.171

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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