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Sorrowful Cōng

#4f5943
Notes

Sorrowful Cōng (#4F5943) is a deep lime 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 (87°, 14%, 31%) places it in the muted 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#4f5943
RGB
rgb(79, 89, 67)
HSL
hsl(87, 14%, 31%)
HWB
hwb(87 26% 65%)
OKLCH
oklch(44.9% 0.037 127.7)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3172 0.3478 0.2710)
HSV
hsv(87, 25%, 35%)
LAB
lab(36.39% -8.45 11.46)
LCH
lch(36.39% 14.24 126.38)
CMYK
cmyk(11%, 0%, 25%, 65%)

Etymology

Sorrowful
adjective

Old English sorg, sorrow — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, sorrowful implies a hushed-and-grieving-and-melancholy quality where the hue carries the visual register of Renaissance-Pieta-and-Lamentation religious-painting-tradition mourning-and-grieving-iconography. Sits at the hushed-and-melancholy end of the grid, parallel to mournful and doleful in usage.

Cōng
noun

The Chinese word for scallion — and the bright yellow-green of fresh-cut scallion stalks. Cōnglǜ refers to the saturated lime-green of Chinese cooking and traditional textile color. The color refers to a fresh-sliced scallion: a saturated, slightly yellow-shifted green with the satin finish of cut allium tissue.

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.

#4f5943
Original
#5b5642
Protanopia
#5a5544
Deuteranopia
#505753
Tritanopia
#555555
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).
AAAon White
7.39:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon Black
2.84:1

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
##4F5943
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3172 0.3478 0.2710)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.037

This color sits well within the sRGB cube. P3 and sRGB share the gray axis and most desaturated tones, so a P3 display renders this identically to an sRGB display.

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