Saturated Road Emerald
Saturated Road Emerald (#31A348) 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 (132°, 54%, 42%) 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 magenta. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
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.
Old English rād, journey / way. As a color modifier, road implies a paved-thoroughfare-and-traffic quality, the visual register of Roman-Watling-Street-and-Fosse-Way hand-laid Roman-paved straight-line agricultural-and-urban road-bed surfaces under English-Roman-road open-country sky. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to lane and path in usage.
A chromium-tinged variety of beryl — the gemstone mined from the Cleopatra-era Mons Smaragdus in Egypt, the Muzo deposits of Colombia, and the Sandawana mines of Zimbabwe. Emerald green refers to a high-clarity faceted emerald with strong color saturation: a saturated, slightly blue-shifted green with the gem's signature internal life. Cooler than fern, warmer than teal, with the heraldic weight of two thousand years of royal favor.
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 exploreHarmonies
Accessibility
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.
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.
Wide gamut
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.
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.