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Submerged Mead

#5a3f17
Notes

Submerged Mead (#5A3F17) is a deep amber with a warm character. It leans warm, pulling light toward red, orange, and yellow. Naturally inviting, it suits editorial and hospitality contexts. Its HSL profile (36°, 59%, 22%) 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 azure. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#5a3f17
RGB
rgb(90, 63, 23)
HSL
hsl(36, 59%, 22%)
HWB
hwb(36 9% 65%)
OKLCH
oklch(39.0% 0.067 74.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3370 0.2514 0.1186)
HSV
hsv(36, 74%, 35%)
LAB
lab(28.88% 7.28 28.35)
LCH
lch(28.88% 29.26 75.60)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 30%, 74%, 65%)

Etymology

Submerged
adjective

Latin sub-mergere, to plunge under — past-participle of submerge. As a color modifier, submerged implies the cool, deep, slightly-shifted quality of a hue viewed through a layer of water or glass. Sits at the deep-and-cool end of the grid, parallel to drowned and sunken in usage.

Mead
noun

Honey wine — fermented honey-and-water, one of the oldest known alcoholic beverages, central to Norse and Anglo-Saxon halls. The color refers to a young Polish miód pitny: a soft, slightly cool warm gold-yellow with the optical clarity of honey-derived alcohol. Warmer than champagne, lighter than whiskey.

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.

#5a3f17
Original
#494012
Protanopia
#4f4718
Deuteranopia
#623836
Tritanopia
#424242
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
9.73:1
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
2.16:1

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
##5A3F17
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3370 0.2514 0.1186)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.067

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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