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Pleasant Castor Moss

#5e8930
Notes

Pleasant Castor Moss (#5E8930) is a true 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 (89°, 48%, 36%) 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 indigo. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#5e8930
RGB
rgb(94, 137, 48)
HSL
hsl(89, 48%, 36%)
HWB
hwb(89 19% 46%)
OKLCH
oklch(57.9% 0.128 131.3)
P3
color(display-p3 0.4051 0.5327 0.2399)
HSV
hsv(89, 65%, 54%)
LAB
lab(52.38% -30.09 41.76)
LCH
lch(52.38% 51.47 125.77)
CMYK
cmyk(31%, 0%, 65%, 46%)

Etymology

Pleasant
adjective

From the French plaisant, pleasing — used as a color modifier since the fifteenth century for hues that read as agreeable, the kind of color that wears well over a long viewing without becoming demanding or fatiguing. Pleasant green, pleasant rose: moderate saturation combined with optical comfort. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside easy and calm.

Castor
modifier

Greek Κάστωρ, Gemini-twin-and-horseman. As a color modifier, castor implies a Gemini-twin-and-mortal-brother quality, the visual register of Gemini-Castor-and-Pollux-twin hand-Gemini-twin-and-mortal-brother Gemini-Castor-and-Pollux-twin-and-Argonaut castor-and-Gemini-twin-and-mortal-brother surfaces under Gemini-Castor-and-Pollux-twin-and-Argonaut spring-Gemini-and-Bortle-1-sky stellar-twin-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to pollux and spica in usage.

Moss
noun

Bryophyta — the nonvascular plants that colonized land 470 million years ago, before vascular plants and far before flowers. The color refers to a thick mat of Hypnum or sphagnum on a temperate forest floor: a soft, slightly yellow-shifted green with the velvet texture of millimeter-scale leaves. Dustier than fern, deeper than lichen, with the slow patience of a plant that lives by absorbing rain through its surface.

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.

#5e8930
Original
#8f7f25
Protanopia
#897c37
Deuteranopia
#608376
Tritanopia
#797979
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).
AA Largeon White
4.12:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAon Black
5.10:1

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
##5E8930
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.4051 0.5327 0.2399)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.128

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.

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