Etched Beeswax
Etched Beeswax (#536D12) is a deep lime with a jewel character. It carries the deep, saturated richness of a gemstone. Authoritative and slightly formal, it works well for type and heavy UI elements. Its HSL profile (77°, 72%, 25%) 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.
Etymology
German ätzen, to etch — past-participle of etch. As a color modifier, etched implies a clear-and-precisely-incised quality, the crisp color of Rembrandt-and-Dürer hand-pulled etching-print fine-line incised-image. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to engraved and inscribed in usage.
The wax secreted by worker honeybees from glands on their abdomen, used to build the comb that holds honey and brood. Refined beeswax for candles and cosmetics is bleached or filtered; raw cappings wax keeps the deep gold of pollen residue. The color is melted unrefined beeswax in a clean container: a warm, slightly translucent gold-yellow with the resinous finish of natural lipid. The pigment that lit medieval cathedrals.
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.