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Sanitary Tsuchi

#5b4614
Notes

Sanitary Tsuchi (#5B4614) is a deep amber 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 (42°, 64%, 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
#5b4614
RGB
rgb(91, 70, 20)
HSL
hsl(42, 64%, 22%)
HWB
hwb(42 8% 64%)
OKLCH
oklch(40.6% 0.072 85.2)
P3
color(display-p3 0.3439 0.2777 0.1155)
HSV
hsv(42, 78%, 36%)
LAB
lab(31.01% 3.21 32.09)
LCH
lch(31.01% 32.25 84.29)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 23%, 78%, 64%)

Etymology

Sanitary
adjective

Latin sānitās, health — adjectival suffix -ary. As a color modifier, sanitary implies a clear-and-clean-and-medical quality, the crisp color of Bauhaus-and-Modern clinical-and-hospital interior-architecture white-tile-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to hygienic and sterile in usage.

Tsuchi
noun

The Japanese word for earth or soil — used for the warm pink-tan of clay-walled tsuchi-kabe of Japanese farmhouses and the unfinished plaster of Kyoto teahouses. The color refers to a freshly applied tsuchi-kabe wall: a soft, slightly muted warm pink-tan with the matte finish of mud-and-straw plaster. Drier than terracotta.

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.

#5b4614
Original
#4f460d
Protanopia
#544b16
Deuteranopia
#633f3c
Tritanopia
#474747
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
9.01:1
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
2.33:1

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
##5B4614
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.3439 0.2777 0.1155)
Inside sRGBOKLCH chroma 0.072

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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